Power naps and lots of Pepsi.

These have been essential tools for University information security officials since Wednesday’s discovery of what appears to be an undocumented computer virus on campus.

According to Kent Strickland, information security officer, the virus is unlike anything they’ve seen before and details remain sketchy. So far, several dozen computers on campus, mostly in labs and student rooms, have been infected.

“We’re not sure exactly what it is,” he said. “We don’t know how widespread it is. We just know that systems that shouldn’t be getting it, got it.”

The virus, being dubbed “tphat” by University information security officials, allows for infected computers to attack networks both on and off campus, Strickland said.

The virus could be a variant of the “Phatbot” worm that is known to disable virus protection and even other viruses it detects to fully compromise a system. Worms like Phatbot spread on their own through e-mail.

But though tphat attacks vulnerabilities in Microsoft Windows, the virus isn’t giving security officials too many clues to go on. And the symptoms of the virus aren’t too specific either.

Infected systems will show slow response times, function improperly and could stop working completely, Strickland said.

And for now, tphat is even remaining silent on its origin and how it spreads–which are crucial pieces of information when it comes to controlling the virus.

“We don’t know exactly how these [computers] got infected,” Strickland said. “Hopefully, we can get it stopped quickly enough, but that all depends on where it started.”

Editor’s Note: Contact the Technology Support Center at: 372-0999 for assistance removing the virus. Students living on campus should contact the Residential Computing Connection at: 372-8077.

Watch the BG News for further updates.