Beware Revived Valentine's Day Virus

Gregg Keizer, Computerworld
Saturday, January 31, 2009 4:15 PM PST
Spam trumpeting the power of love is nothing more than an old trick dressed up in new clothes, more evidence that the backers of the Waledec bot Trojan are the same bunch that hammered users in 2007 with Storm, security companies are warning.

Multiple security vendors, including MX Logic Inc., Trend Micro Inc., and Panda Security, have issued alerts about new Valentine's Day-themed spam campaigns that try to dupe users into installing the Waledec bot.

Subject lines for the spam, said Sam Masiello , vice president of information security at MX Logic, are "short and sweet," and include "Me and You," "In Your Arms" and "With all my love." From the spam, users who browse to the embedded link reach a site with a dozen hearts, any one of which download an executable file when clicked.

Masiello first noted the campaign last Thursday, but other researchers, including those at Trend Micro and Panda, picked up on the trend Monday. Both Masiello and Florabel Baetiong, an anti-spam research engineer with Trend, noted the similarity between the recent infection attempt and Valentine's Day scams launched last year by hackers controlling Storm, another bot Trojan that has since fallen into disuse, possibly because the crew responsible surrendered to heavy pressure by security experts .

"Clearly the old Storm folks are working as hard as they can to build up their new botnet, and are following the old tried-and-true methods of centering their social engineering tactics around holiday themes," said Masiello in a post to the MX Logic blog .

"But it still impresses me that tactics like this continue to work and be so effective, despite how many times it gets recycled," Masiello said in an interview today.

Storm used Valentine's Day spam in both 2007 and 2008 to hijack PCs.

Most researchers have come around to the idea that Waledec is, in fact, the new Storm. Joe Stewart , an expert on botnets -- Storm, in particular -- was confident that the group that backed Storm essentially re-wrote its code to come up with Waledec. "If it's not the same people, they would have had to study Storm intensively to match the functionality," Stewart said in an interview recently. "It's so similar that it's unlikely to be a different group."

Waledec has been busy of late. The malware first began infecting systems just before Christmas , when it used phony holiday greetings and e-cards as bait, another Storm tactic during 2008. Last week, it surfaced again, this time hitchhiking on a spam run that claimed then President-elect Barack Obama would not take the oath of office on Jan. 20.

Although the Waledec botnet remains relatively small -- Stewart put it at just 10,000 machines -- it's growing at "an alarming rate," according to MessageLabs Ltd. In a report on botnets the e-mail security company released Monday (download PDF) , MessageLabs speculated that the botnet owners are "focusing on growing and developing this new botnet, rather than sending spam through it at this stage."

Masiello said that messages designed to plant Waledec were running at a volume of about 4,000-5,000 per hour, down from approximately 12,000 an hour last Friday, and had been holding steady for the last 48 hours. "I'd agree with MessageLabs," said Masiello on Tuesday. "It does look like they are in the process of building up the botnet." MX Logic has not seen any evidence that the Waledec botnet is, in turn, sending spam of its own.

Several botnets that were heavily disrupted by the takedown of McColo Corp., a California-based hosting company, are in the same condition, Masiello added. After suffering losses when McColo -- which had hosted command-and-control servers for several botnets, particular one dubbed "Srizbi" and other called "Rustock" -- was yanked off the Internet, they have spent the last several months adding new PCs to their collection.

source : www.pcworld.com

SecuriKey Enlists in Boot Camp

Philip Michaels, Macworld.com
Tuesday, January 06, 2009 7:40 AM PST

If you're a mobile Mac user who frets about the chance that someone might swipe your laptop and make off with all the important data stored in side, there's at least one option open for consideration: look into investing in GT SecuriKey's SecuriKey Professional Edition for the Mac. The hardware-software combo serves as a kind of key for your laptop--install the software and insert a USB key into the port on your Mac to make it run. No key? Then, no one can access your data, with or without a password.

Ah, but what happens if you're a mobile Mac user who not only frets about the possibility of laptop theft but also uses Leopard's built-in Boot Camp feature to run Windows on your MacBook? That USB key would lock up your Mac data, but anything on the Windows partition would be fair game for a laptop thief.

GT SecuriKey has you covered there, too. On Monday, the company released the SecuriKey Pro Boot Camp Bundle. The new security offering features SecuriKey software for both Mac OS X and Windows and two software licenses. Like other SecuriKey products, the Boot Camp Bundle comes with two USB keys--one of them's a spare key in case you lose the first one. But a single USB key unlocks both the OS X and Windows partitions on your laptop.

"It leverages everything good about the MacBook, regardless of which platform you're using," GT SecuriKey Bennett Griffin said.

The SecuriKey Pro Boot Camp Bundle supports both XP and Vista partitions (and works with OS X 10.5, obviously). It costs $180.

source : www.pcworld.com

Digital Gangster Takes Credit for Twitter Hacks

Ian Paul, PC World
Jan 6, 2009 11:56 pm

Members of the online forum Digital Gangster may have been behind yesterday's Twitter hack. On Monday, hackers gained access to, and posted messages from, 33 Twitter accounts including those of Bill O'Reilly, Britney Spear and CNN's Rick Sanchez.

According to this thread, a hacker named GMZ gained access to Twitter login information and then posted a different thread--that has since been removed--calling on other DG members to email him for credentials to individual accounts. At least another four members then claim to have been part of yesterday's Twitter hack.

The hack included several prank posts from Twitter users such as Fox News, Facebook and president-elect Barack Obama. The strange thing about some of these messages is that they included affiliate links--a common marketing program that pays the creator of the link for driving traffic to another Web site such as Amazon--according to reports. That may make finding the culprits easier as the affiliate programs in question should have a virtual paper trail leading back to the payee.

While DG members are taking credit for this exploit, it's important to remember that it may be all talk. Hacker forums often contain inane threads where members make things up or simply "trash talk" with their online buddies. For example, a user named Craig claims to have had access to Barack Obama's Twitter account. It seems unlikely that a hacker would admit this online knowing that federal investigators would have to get involved with anything involving the president-elect.

That being said, the DG forum members seem to be the most likely culprits at the moment. Considering how quickly authorities were able to track down the Palin e-mail hacker, we should have more to report on the Twitter pranksters soon.

source : www.pcworld.com

The Five Most Dangerous Security Myths: Myth #2

Erik Larkin
Jan 7, 2009 1:42 am

Sure, the Web is today's Wild West, with digital guns blazing and no sheriff in sight. But as long as you use a good antivirus program, you're completely safe, right?

Wrong. A good security program will help a good deal, but no program can catch everything. Antivirus companies are locked into a constant battle with the bad guys, who put all their effort into staying one step ahead of antivirus detection with a flood of new techniques and programs. Security software can often deflect those threats. But sometimes, the bad guys get the upper hand.

Antivirus apps have to scramble most when faced with highly customized 'targeted attacks.' Crooks put a good deal more time into crafting these attacks, with smooth social engineering (ie. con job techniques) to fool the recipient into opening an e-mail attachment, for instance, and careful prep work to ensure the payload can evade antivirus protection. These targeted attacks aren't common, but they represent a major challenge to security apps.

And then you have the vast numbers of non-targeted, run-of-the-mill malware. The bad guys spew out ridiculous numbers of variants, sometimes on the fly, to try and stay ahead of antivirus signatures. Security companies have an easier time squaring off against this technique with proactive protections that don't require a full signature, and also (for some) with new features that can send signatures of suspicious files to online servers with larger, and more up-to-date, signature databases than can be stored on your PC. But this flood also represents a challenge to antivirus.

So don't let your guard down just because you have a good antivirus app installed. You still need a layered defense, where the most important layer consists of knowing the threats--and dispelling the five most dangerous myths.

source : www.pcworld.com

The Five Most Dangerous Security Myths: Myth #3

Erik Larkin
Jan 7, 2009 1:50 am

When the Web was young and blink tags abounded, it wasn't hard to avoid the bad stuff online. You could generally tell by looking at a site if it was unsavory or even dangerous, and if you were careful with your surfing and your e-mail, you could generally have gone without antivirus.

Not anymore. These days crooks like nothing more than to find a security flaw in a benign but vulnerable site and use the flaw to insert hidden attack code. Once in place, that hidden snippet will scan for security flaws on your PC any time you view the page. If it finds one, it will attempt a "drive-by-download," which surreptitiously downloads and installs malware onto your computer.

Sites large and small, from personal pages to big-name company sites, have been hacked in this way. You won't notice anything out of place if you view a hacked page, though if you know what to look for you might recognize an inserted 'iframe' if you view the page's source code.

The same theme holds for e-mail as well. Your trained eye can likely spot the majority of e-mail attacks, and you may even get a good chuckle out of some of the clumsy grammar and spelling. But not every attack e-mail is easy to spot. The targeted attacks mentioned for myth #2 in particular are difficult to catch, and even net-cast-wide blasts can often use good social engineering hooks.

This iron man myth needs to go the way of those godawful blink tags for two reasons: First, so you'll know to keep your PC secure so that if you're unlucky enough to happen across a hacked site, or accidentally open that well-crafted e-mail, the drive-by-download or e-mail payload won't snare you. Second, if you run your own site, you'll know to keep an eye on it to make sure it hasn't been hacked to attack your visitors. In particular, make sure you keep blogs and any other Web application up-to-date.

If you read the previous security myth-buster, you know antivirus by itself isn't enough. And now, you know that your good sense, while critical, isn't enough either. So sayonara, myth three.

source : www.pcworld.com

CheckFree Warns 5 Million Customers After Hack

Robert McMillan, IDG News Service
Tuesday, January 06, 2009 5:40 PM PST

CheckFree and some of the banks that use its electronic bill payment service are notifying more than 5 million customers after criminals took control of several of the company's Internet domains and redirected customer traffic to a malicious Web site hosted in the Ukraine.

The Dec. 2 attack was widely publicized shortly after it occurred, but in a notice filed with the New Hampshire Attorney General, CheckFree disclosed that it was warning many more customers than previously thought.

That's because CheckFree is not only notifying users of its own CheckFree.com Web site of the breach, it is also working with banks to contact people who tried to pay bills from banks that use the CheckFree bill payment service.

"The 5 million people who were notified about the CheckFree redirection were a combination of two groups," said Melanie Tolley, vice president of communications with CheckFree's parent company, Fiserv, in an prepared statement. "1.) those who we were able to identify who had attempted to pay bills from our client's bill pay sites and minus those who actually completed sessions on our site; and 2.) anyone enrolled in mycheckfree.com."

Tolley wouldn't say what banks were affected by the hack, but the majority of these five million customers were CheckFree's own users, she said. In total, about 42 million customers access CheckFree's bill payment site, she said.

Customers who went to CheckFree's Web sites between 12:35 a.m. and 10:10 a.m. on the morning of the attack were redirected to a Ukrainian Web server that used malicious software to try and install a password-stealing program on the victim's computer.

The criminals were able to take control of several CheckFree Web domains after logging into the company's Internet domain registrar, Network Solutions, and changing the CheckFree DNS (Domain Name System) settings. This same technique was used by hackers one year ago, to take control of Comcast's Web site. It is not clear how the attackers were able to get CheckFree's Network Solutions password, but some security experts believe that CheckFree may have fallen prey to a phishing attack.

Looking at typical Web site traffic patterns, Fiserv guesses that about 160,000 consumers were exposed to the Ukrainian attack site, but not all of these customers would have been infected. For the attack to work, the victim would have to be a PC user without antivirus software who was also using an out-of-date-version of Adobe Acrobat. Because of these conditions, Fiserv believes that "a very small number" of people were affected, Tolley said.

However, because the company lost control of its Web domains, it doesn't know exactly who was hit. And so it must warn a much larger number of customers.

It could have been much worse. CheckFree processes bill payments for more than half of the banking institutions in the U.S., according to Gartner analyst Avivah Litan.

Although larger banks typically do not do this, some smaller banks simply turn their online bill payment services over to CheckFree, she said. "If they turn it over to CheckFree, chances are all those users were redirected to the CheckFree domain, but it was branded as the bank's domain."

CheckFree has deals to provide electronic bill payment services to banks such as Wachovia and Bank of America. It is not clear whether or not these banks were affected by the attack.

This kind of incident could also happen with fund transfer services, which are also frequently outsourced, Litan said. "Bank security is only a strong as its weakest link and the weakest links in banking are online payment and fund transfer [services]," Litan said.

source : www.pcworld.com

Data Breaches Rose Sharply in 2008, Says Study

Jeremy Kirk, IDG News Service
Wednesday, January 07, 2009 4:40 AM PST

More than 35 million data records were breached in 2008 in the U.S., a figure that underscores continuing difficulties in securing information, according to the Identity Theft Resource Center (ITRC).

The majority of the lost data was neither encrypted nor protected by a password, according to the ITRC's report.

It documents 656 breaches in 2008 from a range of well-known U.S. companies and government entities, compared to 446 breaches in 2007, a 47 percent increase. Information about the breaches was collected by tracking media reports and the disclosures companies are required to make by law.

Data breach notification laws vary by state. Some companies do not reveal the number of data records that have been affected, which means the actual number of data breaches is likely much more than 35 million.

"More companies are revealing that they have had a data breach, either due to laws or public pressure," the ITRC wrote on its Web site. "Our sense is that two things are happening -- the criminal population is stealing more data from companies and that we are hearing more about the breaches."

The data breaches came from a variety of mishaps, including theft of laptops, hacking, employees improperly handling data, accidental disclosure and problems with subcontractors.

BNY Mellon Shareowner Services, an investment bank based in New Jersey, reported the highest number of breached records: 12.5 million. A box of computer tapes containing names, Social Security and account numbers was lost in February 2008. A lock on the truck transporting the tapes was broken, and the truck had been left unattended, according to news reports. The tapes were not encrypted.

The business community had the most breaches, comprising more than a third of the 656 breaches, ITRC said. Government and military organizations came in at 16.8 percent, the second-highest tally. However, that's an improvement over 2006, when that sector comprised nearly 30 percent of all reported data breaches, the center said.

Some 15.7 percent of all breaches were attributed to insider theft, a figure that more than doubled between 2007 and 2008, ITRC said.

source : www.pcworld.com

Microsoft applauds Chinese counterfeit software prison sentences

Author:Antony Savvas
Posted:11:59 05 Jan 2009
Topics:Software Piracy | Software Companies

Microsoft has applauded the Chinese government for clamping down on software pirates with prison sentences.

A court in Shenzhen, southern China, has handed down sentences to 11 ringleaders of what was described as the world's largest software counterfeiting syndicate.

The sentences, ranging from 1.5 to 6.5 years, include the longest sentences handed down for this type of crime in China's history.

Based in the southern China province of Guangdong, members of the syndicate were arrested by Chinese authorities in July 2007, following an international investigation led by China's Public Security Bureau (PSB) and the FBI. Microsoft and hundreds of Microsoft customers and partners also provided information which assisted in the investigation.

The 11 accused were part of a criminal syndicate responsible for manufacturing and distributing an estimated $2bn-worth of high-quality counterfeit Microsoft software.

The counterfeit software, found in 36 countries and on five continents, contained fake versions of 19 of Microsoft's most popular products and was produced in at least 11 languages.

"Microsoft greatly appreciates the work of China's PSB and the FBI in taking strong enforcement action against this global software counterfeiting syndicate," said David Finn, associate general counsel for Worldwide Anti-Piracy and Anti-Counterfeiting at Microsoft.

Fengming Liu, vice-president of Microsoft Greater China Region, said, "Software piracy negatively impacts local economic growth, stifling innovation, taking business opportunity away from legitimate resale channels and putting consumers and partners at risk. Enforcement of intellectual property rights is critical to fostering an environment of innovation and fair competition."

Microsoft launched the Genuine Software Initiative in 2006, and since then it has intensified its efforts to protect customers and channel partners from the risks of counterfeit software through an increased focus on education, engineering and enforcement.

source : www.computerweekly.com

Security risk in Windows 7 pirates

Author:Warwick Ashford
Posted:12:01 05 Jan 2009
Topics:Security | Operating Systems

Installing leaked copies of Microsoft's Windows 7 operating system is highly risky.

Pirate versions of an early build of Microsoft's latest operating system are available on file-sharing networks.

Windows 7 is under final developer testing ahead of an expected commercial release later this month.

But security firm Fortify Software says there is no way of knowing whether or not hackers have tampered with the 2.44Gbyte file.

Anyone downloading and installing the operating system could find their PC generating malware, denial of service attacks and spam, said Fortify.

It is highly unlikely that any IT security application will protect users from internally coded malware in the operating system, said Rob Rachwald, director product marketing at Fortify.
"Fall-out from using an unofficial version of the new operating system could be quite severe," he said.

Windows 7, which is based on the code in Windows Vista, offers built in support for touch-sensitive displays.

In addition, Microsoft has extended its Bitlocker encryption technology to support portable storage devices.

Microsoft said users will also be able to connect securely to Windows Server 2008 networks without the need for a VPN.

source : www.computerweekly.com

Secure operating systems

Main article: Secure operating systems

One use of the term computer security refers to technology to implement a secure operating system. Much of this technology is based on science developed in the 1980s and used to produce what may be some of the most impenetrable operating systems ever. Though still valid, the technology is in limited use today, primarily because it imposes some changes to system management and also because it is not widely understood. Such ultra-strong secure operating systems are based on operating system kernel technology that can guarantee that certain security policies are absolutely enforced in an operating environment. An example of such a Computer security policy is the Bell-LaPadula model. The strategy is based on a coupling of special microprocessor hardware features, often involving the memory management unit, to a special correctly implemented operating system kernel. This forms the foundation for a secure operating system which, if certain critical parts are designed and implemented correctly, can ensure the absolute impossibility of penetration by hostile elements. This capability is enabled because the configuration not only imposes a security policy, but in theory completely protects itself from corruption. Ordinary operating systems, on the other hand, lack the features that assure this maximal level of security. The design methodology to produce such secure systems is precise, deterministic and logical.

Systems designed with such methodology represent the state of the art of computer security although products using such security are not widely known. In sharp contrast to most kinds of software, they meet specifications with verifiable certainty comparable to specifications for size, weight and power. Secure operating systems designed this way are used primarily to protect national security information, military secrets, and the data of international financial institutions. These are very powerful security tools and very few secure operating systems have been certified at the highest level (Orange Book A-1) to operate over the range of "Top Secret" to "unclassified" (including Honeywell SCOMP, USAF SACDIN, NSA Blacker and Boeing MLS LAN.) The assurance of security depends not only on the soundness of the design strategy, but also on the assurance of correctness of the implementation, and therefore there are degrees of security strength defined for COMPUSEC. The Common Criteria quantifies security strength of products in terms of two components, security functionality and assurance level (such as EAL levels), and these are specified in a Protection Profile for requirements and a Security Target for product descriptions. None of these ultra-high assurance secure general purpose operating systems have been produced for decades or certified under the Common Criteria.

In USA parlance, the term High Assurance usually suggests the system has the right security functions that are implemented robustly enough to protect DoD and DoE classified information. Medium assurance suggests it can protect less valuable information, such as income tax information. Secure operating systems designed to meet medium robustness levels of security functionality and assurance have seen wider use within both government and commercial markets. Medium robust systems may provide the same security functions as high assurance secure operating systems but do so at a lower assurance level (such as Common Criteria levels EAL4 or EAL5). Lower levels mean we can be less certain that the security functions are implemented flawlessly, and therefore less dependable. These systems are found in use on web servers, guards, database servers, and management hosts and are used not only to protect the data stored on these systems but also to provide a high level of protection for network connections and routing services.
source : en.wikipedia.org

Computer security

Computer security is a branch of technology known as information security as applied to computers. The objective of computer security varies and can include protection of information from theft or corruption, or the preservation of availability, as defined in the security policy.

Computer security imposes requirements on computers that are different from most system requirements because they often take the form of constraints on what computers are not supposed to do. This makes computer security particularly challenging because it is hard enough just to make computer programs do everything they are designed to do correctly. Furthermore, negative requirements are deceptively complicated to satisfy and require exhaustive testing to verify, which is impractical for most computer programs. Computer security provides a technical strategy to convert negative requirements to positive enforceable rules. For this reason, computer security is often more technical and mathematical than some computer science fields.[citation needed]

Typical approaches to improving computer security (in approximate order of strength) can include the following:

* Physically limit access to computers to only those who will not compromise security.
* Hardware mechanisms that impose rules on computer programs, thus avoiding depending on computer programs for computer security.
* Operating system mechanisms that impose rules on programs to avoid trusting computer programs.
* Programming strategies to make computer programs dependable and resist subversion.

source : en.wikipedia.org

HomePatrol: Capture Crooks in the Act

Released: December 22, 2008
Version: 1.0.0.4

Supported Platforms: Windows 2000, XP, & Vista
Recommended Hardware: While HomePatrol can work with IP cameras all around the world, to monitor your home or office you'll need a webcam.

by Tim Smith

Do you ever find yourself asking "Where'd my stapler go?" or "Who's been checking out my e-mail?" Or perhaps something more serious like "Who were the thieves that broke into my home while I was on vacation?"

Our latest utility, HomePatrol, can help answer those questions by monitoring your webcam-equipped home or office. When you're not at your computer, your webcam is sitting idle. HomePatrol leverages this great piece of technology to monitor an area for movement. As soon as HomePatrol detects motion, it begins recording.

HomePatrol allows you to:
• Record video when motion is detected
• E-mail snapshots to a specified e-mail address
• FTP snapshots to a remote location
• Schedule when HomePatrol should monitor
• Playback captured videos

HomePatrol features:
• Support for almost any webcam
• Sensitivity settings to determine when movement should be recorded
• Support for multiple cameras at once
• Date and time overlay on snapshots and video
• Support for compression codecs to shrink video file sizes
• Support for IP cameras

Source : www.pcmag.com

Anti-theft solution bolsters mobile computing security

By :Joe O'Halloran

In a bid to offer an IT security solution for mobile computing professionals, Ericsson is collaborating with Intel to ensure that its mobile broadband modules are interoperable with the chip giant’s Anti-Theft PC Protection Technology for notebooks.

The two companies are joining forces with the ultimate aim of taking the profit out of stealing laptops whilst protecting sensitive and important information. This threat has continued to grow with the increased popularity of mobile computing as devices become more affordable and mobile broadband packages become more competitive.

Ericsson and Intel recognise that theft or loss of notebooks can have enormous financial consequences for enterprise users, especially when sensitive data on the notebook is lost or obtained by unauthorised persons.

Thus the two firms have constructed a theft management service residing in the network can send a message via SMS to the mobile broadband module inside the mobile computing device. This will transfer securely the message to Intel's Anti-Theft function inside the processor platform, which takes appropriate actions, such as completely locking the computer by blocking the boot process, making it unusable.

When the notebook is located and recovered, an unlock message can be sent to the notebook that makes the data accessible again. When working in conjunction with third-party encryption hardware or software, the solution can also can protect data by deleting cryptographic keys or similar essential code for decryption.

The anti-theft mechanism also builds on Ericsson's Mobile Broadband Modules which are tightly integrated in and optimised for notebooks. It can also be programmed to respond to repeated login failures and expiration of a timer that requires regularly scheduled connection to a central server. GPS-based location functionality technology can be utilised to determine a theft situation when the notebook is moved outside a pre-defined area.

Commented Mats Norin, Vice President and head of Mobile Broadband Modules at Ericsson, "[Our vision is to offer] enterprise users a secure mobile broadband experience for their notebooks. We are committed to work with industry leaders to shape a complete, end-to-end solution to drive increased mobile broadband adoption."

"We have entered a new era for security for the on-the-go businessperson in which losing a notebook or having it stolen can have disastrous implications," added George Thangadurai, director of Intel's Strategy and Platform Planning Group, and general manager of the company's Anti-Theft Program. "[Technolgy should take] notebook security to a new level, making notebook theft for profit an exercise in futility and with third-party software help secure data."

The solution will be available in commercial data protection products starting second half of 2009.

Source : www.computerweekly.com

How to protect your computer by anti-virus application?

By : Ravesh Goodman

How to get rid of virus? Can you take precautions regarding virus? Learning from the experiences of IT professionals will help to avoid this potential danger.

Just got home a few hours ago from our week on the CB. I will upload some more detailed reviews tomorrow, but I wanted to make some quick comments right away about an outbreak of norovirus on this week's cruise. Several hundred passengers became sick from the virus and had fairly uncomfortable digestive problems and cabin confinement. Captain Kent and the crew never revealed the precise number of stricken passengers, but my guess is that it involved more than 200 based only from my counts of the silver mylar tape placed over the grates of the cabin doors where stricken passengers were confined.

After the outbreak hit, the Captain issued a warning on the P.A., the hand sanitizer stations doubled, passengers were no longer able to serve themselves in any buffet, and crews began spraying public areas and furniture with santizer. Our 15-year old became sick around 3am on Friday, April 6. He threw up several times in his cabin and in the hallway. We called the 911 and medical emergency numbers and got no response. We called the concierge number, "O", and the cabin steward, but no one answered. So, we covered the mess as best we could with Princess Patters, paper towels, and a norovirus warning sheet to try to help other passengers avoid contamination.

At 7 am, the crew noticed the mess themselves and quickly sent what they called a "hit squad" to our son's inside cabin. They sealed the cabin, took his clothes and removed the bed linens from the one bunk for decontamination. At 11am, the ship's nurse showed up with a few days' supply of Cipro and preprinted instructions about what our son could order from room service for the next two days. The nurse did not take a medical history and never asked us or our son about any allergies. Our son was confined to his cabin until 3am this morning. He was pretty grumpy about those rules as he missed a day at sea and the day at Princess Cays. Nevertheless, in the car ride home from the airport, he told us that he really had a great time on the cruise because of all the terrific teenage friends he made this past week.

In several respects, I was impressed with how Princess handled this big problem and in several respects I thought they dropped the ball. Clearly Princess knew it had a big problem and pulled out the stops to spray down the handrails, deck furniture, passengers, etc. with sanitizers. I have no idea about how effective those sprays are against a virus. Princess was also smart to isolate infected folks, even though I know they were very disappointed to have two days of confinement and 2 more days of prohibition from all restaurants. And, Princess did a good job of having a trained hit squad tend to clearning our son's cabin, rather than the assigned cabin steward. On the other hand, I was not dazzled by the medical staff. Perhaps they were overwhelmed. We were also told that our son's clothes would be laundered for free, yet charges showed up on the final bill we received early this morning. I stood in line before disembarkation and was repaid in cash. Princess, however, refused to refund the Princess Cays cabana rental we did not use because our son was sick. Princess also required our son to order exclusively from a "light meals" room service menu, yet telephone hold times were more than 40 minutes and food wasn't delivered for 90 minutes. We ended up serving him ourselves by carrying items down 4 decks from the Horizon Court buffet. He never did see the ship's doctor, but he did recuperate quickly, as did two other passengers in nearby cabins who got an antibiotic shot from the ship's nurse.

The norovirus issue is a big problem for the cruise industry. I sympathize and understand how challenging this is for a ship at sea with 5,000 people onboard. Nevertheless, the virus is nasty enough and common enough on cruises that I expect we will likely opt for resort hotels or condos in the future. If you do cruise, please take the hand sanitizer solution seriously, try to get decent amounts of rest, hydration, and nutrition, and be sensitive to what you touch in public areas. The rest of our family followed these rules and survived without illness.

was on this same cruise and disagree with the OP as to the extent of the "outbreak". The virus began to emerge on Wednesday with 10 cases reported. By Thursday evening, the number had increased to 60 confirmed cases. Because of this jump, the ship went to "Code Red". My daughter was complaning that she felt like she was going to throw up in Wed night, and eventually did. The doctor came to the cabin a few hours later. Because my daughter was sound asleep and only threw up once and showed no other signs of the virus, she was not diagnosed with Noro. The doctor called me at 7:30 AM Thursday to make sure there was no other instances and released her to continue enjoying the cruise. The numbers I quoted above were direct from the doctor's mouth. They went to "Code Red" due to the rapid increase in the number of cases from Wed to Thursday. The last I heard was that the total number of cases never exceeded 100 people, due in large part to the Noro procedures that were put into place Wed night. My daughter's room did get taped over the vents, but the tape was removed within hours. The tape is a precaution they use if you complain of any symptoms, whether you get the virus or not.

Source : www.computeruser.com