While uploading important information onto the Internet Monday morning, Karen Dorcas saw a small box appear on her computer screen that told her she had 60 seconds before her terminal would shut down ‹ and the clock was ticking.
"I tried to hurry within that minute to save everything I was working on," she said.
Dorcas is the assistant to the director of Kenai Peninsula College, and on this particular morning, she was posting class schedules for the coming school year to the school's Web site when it was attacked by an unseen foe.
"I had to work within 10-minute segments for several hours," Dorcas said of the remainder of her work on that project for the day. "It was an irritant and an inconvenience."
KPC eventually shut down all of its computers that afternoon at 4 p.m., and Dorcas, who has worked for KPC for 24 years, considered the possibilities.
"Gosh. Would I have to go back to the typewriter?" she asked
By now this problem may be old hat for many PC users who log on the near-ubiquitous World Wide Web using the newer versions of Microsoft Windows ‹ NT, XP and 2000.
Along with Dorcas and much of KPC's computer-bound staff and faculty, more than 300 of the University of Alaska system computers across the state fell victim to the infectious program, W32.Blas-ter.Worm (or "Blaster") on Monday, state officials said.
According to Symantec, the software and antivirus manufacturer distributing the remedy, more than 350,000 computers worldwide were attacked by Friday.
Similar to a computer virus in that it is often intended to do a computer harm, a worm is not triggered by clicking on a button to open some digital Pandora's box.
Worms are unleashed by their malevolent creators and virtually crawl into computer systems to wreak havoc.
"You don't have to download it," said Karl Rosser, who works at the Soldotna computer service and repair shop Custom CPU.
"After you get it, it copies itself and spreads itself to everything."
Last month Microsoft Inc. officials announced a vulnerable spot in the update program that reinforces Windows security measures. This made it possible for the worm to infect Windows programs.
Rosser said once Blaster infiltrates a computer, it proceeds to take up Internet bandwidth and computer memory, and can modify itself.
"This worm has already split itself into two other flavors," Rosser said.
A Microsoft statement said the company is diligently preparing to defend against anticipated future attacks.
A patch for the security hole the worm exploited is available at www.microsoft.com. The antidote, Symantec's FixBlaster.exe, is available to those who can stay online at www.symantec.com long enough to download it.
Rosser said because the worm can limit Internet access to these cures, however, his store has been giving out copies to people who stop in with a floppy disk or a CD, along with instructions on how to remove the worm and protect computers from further attacks.
KPC director Gary Turner described just the kind of scare his staff had Monday when computers on both the Homer and Soldotna campuses began automatically shutting down.
"It's a potential for losing all that you have on your machine," Turner said.
"Many of us try to go completely paper-less. I have everything backed up, but you still worry."
The incident meant the school was without access to outside digital communications for about 30 hours while technical experts found a cure. Then, they had to send someone to the Homer campus with the fix.
Turner said it was more of an inconvenience than a true productivity problem, however.
"We're all relying on computers and the Internet a lot, but we went back to the old way," he said, noting that in-house communication was done face-to-face and contact with people off the campus was done over the phones.
"But if it would have occurred the first week of school, in September, it would have been a bigger problem."
KPC network administrator Mark Jensen said the school had standard antivirul programs in place to protect their systems.
"The antivirus signatures are downloaded on the server and pushed out to machines as soon as they are available," Jensen said.
But the Microsoft soft spot allowed the worm to creep past this defense mechanism.
"Any type of antivirus wouldn't have picked it up," Rosser said. "You get it just by going on the Internet."
Bill Gregory is the director of operation services for statewide information technology, an administrative arm of the university system.
He said the worm could have entered the university system's computer network through the Internet, one of the university's service providers, a campus dial-up or a machine that was brought from home by a staff, faculty member or student.
Gregory said each campus has managed its own solution, but pointed out that vital university information wasn't lost.
"Fortunately, none of the major systems like student grades, payroll or finance applications were impacted by this worm," he said.
