Security news
Security news25 June 2003
Sophos triumphs at Cannes Film Festival, protecting against over 250 virus attacks
 A film starring Penelope Cruz opened the festival |
Sophos's world leading anti-virus protection was installed on 300 computers used across the festival, 40 of which were in the press room used by media representatives from around the world.
In total, 250 virus alerts were recorded during the course of the ten day event. An analysis shows clearly the risks to which the festival would have been exposed had they not had anti-virus protection in place.
The majority of virus attacks (80%) prevented by Sophos Anti-Virus originated from the internet and attempted to infect via email. Additionally, a number of festival attendees used the KaZaA file-sharing network and reports showed that a number of viruses were prevented from infecting festival computers via that route. Cedric Lemoigne, the festival's IT manager responsible for administering Sophos Anti-Virus, quickly identified those who were putting their computers at risk, and was able to educate them about the risks of downloading potentially dangerous code from the internet.
Festival organisers were particularly pleased to be protected against the W32/Sobig-B worm, which disguised as an email from Microsoft became widespread across the internet during the course of the film festival. The computers at the festival were able to "bounce off" Sobig-B's attacks as they had been automatically updated a few hours before, perfectly illustrating the benefits of automatically updating anti-virus protection on a regular basis. W32/Klez-H, a worm which has been spreading widely since early 2002 attempted to cause disruption, representing 6% of the attacks made on the Cannes Film Festival's network. However, like all other attacks it was easily stopped by Sophos Anti-Virus.
"It is important for organisations such as ours to keep our anti-virus protection constantly up to date," commented Cedric Lemoigne, IT Manager for the Cannes Film Festival. "With Sophos, we were able to offer absolute protection, and we look forward to the next Festival in Cannes."
