Suffolk Computer Services Blog

What is GPL?

GPL stands for General Public License and is sometimes referred to as GNU GPL.  GNU stands for "GNU's Not Unix" and is a computer operating system composed entirely of free software.  GNU was developed by Richard Stallman, and was provided under the GNU General Public License (GPL).  Although the GNU GPL was originally intended for the GNU operating system, it was quickly adopted by lots of other free software.  It has undergone several revisions, and there are a few "sub-types", with the latest version of GNU-GPL being version 3.

Read more: Joomla! and GPL

It was widely reported today that French military aircraft were grounded after the databases containing their flight plans were infected with the Conficker worm - at one point French naval staff were even told not to switch on their computers. (Telegraph.co.uk).

Not only the French being affected though, the UK Ministry of Defence also reported that some of its major systems were also affected, spreading across admin offices, Royal Navy Warships and Submarines.  It has even infected over 800 Hospital computers in Sheffield! Does anyone else find this somewhat concerning?

Microsoft warned of this worm, releasing notifications and patches as soon as the vulnerability was identified - the patch was released on 15th October 2008 (Microsoft Information Page, Virus Alerts) yet the military seem to have not patched their systems or secured against potential sources of infection!  So, what can YOU do to avoid Conficker (otherwise known as DownUp, DownAdUp or Kido)?

Read more: Conficker worm grounds French military