introduction
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worms and viruses
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costs
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who's responsible?
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solutions
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references
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CS201 Final Project
Neil Chou
Jiayi Chong
Chee Hau Tan
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Financial Costs
Estimating the financial costs incurred by Stanford due to computer
security related issues is hardly an easy task to do. Even if we only
consider the damage done by the MS Blaster and Gaobot worms, the numbers
are hardly accurate, as easily demonstrated by the fact that estimates by
the ACM (Association for Computing Machinery)
for the financial costs incurred by the MS Blaster worm to the United
States ranged from 50 million dollars to a staggering billions of dollars.
Nonetheless, the economic damage is very real...
- data loss from reformating hard disk after virus attack
- time spent by Residential Computer Consultants, and Stanford's ITSS
department tending to affected computer users
- network congestion due to traffic spike caused by numerous emails
sent by affected computers and preventing spread to the rest of the
campus network
- Additional system infrastructure required to filter virus-containing
emails, and to conduct periodic checks on all campus computers for
infection status
- productivitiy loss from deleting virus-containing emails, running
virus-scan programs, and network downtime by all campus computer
users
According to the Information Technology Systems and Services (ITSS)
department at Stanford, the MS Blaster worm attacks in Summer 2003 cost an
estimated $1.5 million measured in time spent in disinfecting
computers. The costs of the more recent Gaobot worm was estimated at under
$0.5 million, significantly less than that of the MS Blaster worm as it
was less widespread. The above estimates did not account for
productivity losses. Fortunately, both worms were non-destructive,
and data loss was minimal.
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