City computers back in business

NORFOLK, Va. (WAVY) - Information technologists in Norfolk worked around the clock to get a handle on a virus that reeked havoc on city computers for a week. On Wednesday February 17, the affected departments got the all-clear.

There were nearly 800 infected computers in different city departments.

Hap Cluff, the IT Director, told WAVY.com the code that infiltrated Norfolk's system could have shut down the entire city, but the IT department spotted it quickly and immediately began damage control.

"Somehow something got in our system," said Cluff. "It could have been a time bomb, could have been there for years. We don't know. We are literally scrubbing everything right now to find out."  

It is a very sophisticated and destructive code that has caused data problems for departments throughout Norfolk, including City Hall, the police department, even the city jail.

"The jail is having to do some booking by paper," said Cluff. "But they all have systems in place to handle this."

The IT detectives told WAVY.com it's possible a city employee accidentally unleashed the malicious code into the system. The scary thing for the IT workers is that they still can't figure out where the code originally came from.  "We have not found anything that can tell us what it is," said Cluff. They conducted a 71 hour scan to retrieve the files.

Information Technology Specialist Curtis Kelecava said, "From what we can see, it looks like it was built to be destructive.  We don't have any evidence they tried to steal financial information, credit card information or personal information, just somebody being destructive."

Out of Norfolk's fleet of 4,500 computers, 784 were attacked, but the IT department worked so quickly, the attacker was unable to do any permanent destruction.   "It's very important to note there has been no loss of data, no damage to data, no security breach on the city's data," said Cluff.