#namely that it was very widespread and infected BOTH the ACTUAL US NAVY and the ACTUAL US STATE DEPARTMENT
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*giggling and twirling my hair and sighing like I have a crush*
Welchia… she’s so… beautiful…
I wanna run her on a Blaster-infected PC and watch her work…
#this is not about a girl this is about a COMPUTER VIRUS#specifically a nematode#which is a virus that attempts to do good and remove another virus#Welchia is an example of a nematode which was potentially more damaging than the virus it was trying to protect users against#namely that it was very widespread and infected BOTH the ACTUAL US NAVY and the ACTUAL US STATE DEPARTMENT#causing significant delays for both government entities#but it did uninstall the blaster virus and patch the vulnerability blaster exploited!#anyway#Welchia won’t infect you unless you have like. the worst luck imaginable. idk if it’s even still considered active since it’s been so long#even at the time Blaster and Welchia were active; most systems which were even infectable were using OS that were out of date#or went unpatched. simply because attempting to update them could break the programs that the computers were primarily using#for example: my local dentist office has an X-RAY program that clearly wasn’t designed for Windows 11#the most recent OS they use to run it is windows 7#even now plenty of restaurants use special embedded formats of windows XP for their point of sale systems even though they’re out of date#because updating them would be hellish and would put the point of sale out of commission for a while#government systems which have specialized programs which are the sole thing the computers are used for would have no incentive to update#because they have to run 24/7/365 and any delay or outage (say by an update to a new OS) could put them seriously behind#any system which cannot pause long enough to be updated or would potentially seriously lose usefulness if it was updated is extra vulnerable#so like. your Windows 11 computer is fine. especially since Welchia has an auto-kill switch when the date changes to 2004#but at the time it was destructive simply because installing the security patches and interrupting programs/restarting to do so was bad#for computers which needed to never stop working#namely: the things that society quickly crumbles without#luckily Welchia didn’t disrupt the way Wannacry did
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