Is Your Server Safe?

The 53 Web servers that deliver catalog and circulation information to the Fort Wayne (IN) Community Schools had to be shut down September 21, leaving the district's students and teachers without a library catalog, and the library staff members having to rely on their knowledge of the Dewey Decimal System. The district's servers had become infected by the "Nimda" worm, a virus that has entered thousands of Web servers worldwide and clogged the Internet with its attempts to replicate itself. "No data was lost—that's kept on another server—but it took about 200 person-hours of hard work to rebuild the Web servers and bring the system back," says Jack Byrd, the director of technology for the Fort Wayne district.

This year has been the most active year yet for the proliferation of sinister viruses, such as Code Red, Code Blue, SirCam, and many more. WTC.exe, a Trojan horse virus that appears in an e-mail message, seemingly provides the reader with a way to "vote for peace" between America and Islam, but in fact releases a file that deletes everything from the unsuspecting user's hard drive. But the Nimda virus ("admin" spelled backwards) has been particularly destructive, taking advantage of a few small security holes in Microsoft's operating system and Web server software to clog the Internet with files that endlessly duplicate themselves. Andrew Mutch, a library systems technician for Waterford (MI) Township Library, says that his library escaped Nimda unscathed. However, Mutch says, another Waterford Township server that had been damaged by a previous Code Red virus attack—and had supposedly been patched against Nimda—let Nimda in "through a back door. Fortunately, our firewall blocked [it]." He worries, however, about small libraries, schools, and others without a staff of technicians to clean up the damages these viruses cause. "The real fix for this problem is for Microsoft to start taking security as seriously as it does the look and feel of [its] products," he says. "I think it's unreasonable for end-users to be left to fend for themselves."

What can school or public libraries do to protect their systems? Any system on a network can be corrupted if even one other system on the network is infected. There are several very good Web sites that make data about new viruses available almost the moment those viruses appear; among them are the System Response site (www.symantec.com/avcenter) from Symantec, maker of the Norton AntiVirus software, and About.com's antivirus software site (antivirus.about.com ). Every system—such as a library circulation server or an Internet server—needs good, reliable antivirus software installed, and that software should be updated regularly. Russell Smith, educational technology consultant for Region 14 Education Service Center in Abilene, TX, has written an excellent article on antivirus software and how to use it, targeted at schools; it's available at www.electronic-school.com/2001/ 09/0901poweruser.html.

Smith recommends using at least version 5.5 of Microsoft Internet Explorer. In addition, because you can never predict when disaster may strike your system, Smith recommends that libraries purchase a CD-R (one-time rewriteable disk) drive to make nightly backups of circulation and catalog records. Smith says that as long as there are viruses, "Backup is essential."