The latest computer worm has wreaked havoc in provincial government departments in Bisho, the government confirmed on Tuesday.
The departments have apparently been unable to pay accounts and service providers for two weeks since their computer systems were attacked by the rapidly evolving Sasser worm.
The virus, which has affected millions of personal computers, was detected last week. It tore across almost all departments’ computer systems, making them almost unusable.
Masiza Mazizi, the spokesperson for the office of premier Nosimo Balindlela, said on Tuesday that some accounts and service providers had not been paid.
”We apologise to all service providers for the delay caused in the payment. Our wide network system was affected by a virus, so our system was down until we were virus clean.
”It blocked the processing of information. We could not process any transaction.”
The system has been cleaned and payments are now taking place. Among Sasser’s other victims were banks and travel booking systems. Unlike other outbreaks, Sasser infects vulnerable computers without any action by the user such as opening attachments, allowing it to spread very quickly.
Worms tend to spread faster than a typical e-mail-borne virus as they are usually programmed to continuously scan the internet’s global network to hunt for computers to infect.
State Information Technology Agency corporate communications head, Wandile Zote, confirmed that the government computer system was up and running.
”We no longer have any problem,” Zote said. – Sapa