After 36 hours of last-minute computer programming to prevent the University of Colorado at Boulder's network from being compromised by the invasive "Blaster" worm, Davis Chen finally relaxed -- and began preparing for class.
A senior biology major and a member of CU-Boulder's Information Technology Services staff, Chen was congratulated April 13 by Chancellor Richard Bynny for winning the Student Employee of The Year award. Chen led the university's effort to prevent the Blaster worm from spreading just as students returned for the start of the fall 2003 semester.
The Blaster worm exploited a Windows vulnerability to allow a hacker complete access to infected computers. "It was a big problem," Chen said. "We have departments at CU-Boulder with sensitive data that shouldn't be leaked, and the worm could've compromised all of that. There was a lot more at stake than a bunch of money."
Chen's expertise did save CU-Boulder a lot of money, though, especially considering what happened at other campuses.
The CU-Boulder ITS staff, including Chen, spent only $9,000 and 465 hours to repair about 265 computers -- the smallest impact felt of 19 research universities polled in an informal survey published in the Chronicle of Higher Education. In contrast, Stanford University spent $806,000 and took 18,420 hours to repair almost one-third of its entire campus network. The survey reported an average expense of nearly $300,000 at the 19 schools infected by the worm.
CU-Boulder's success in dealing with the Blaster worm was recognized at schools across the country. Several requested Chen's solution and instructions on how to implement his program on their own networks.
"I'm thrilled that Davis was recognized as the campus' student employee of the year," said Dennis Maloney, executive director of ITS. "His efforts with regard to our response to the Blaster worm showed a lot of innovation. He very quickly came up with a creative solution to help the campus mitigate what could have been a disaster."
Chen's quick work was no surprise to his fellow technicians -- he's assisted on computer security issues in the past. His skills and willingness to help have become well known within Information Technology Services, where his main job for the last five years has been to troubleshoot hardware and software problems on faculty and staff computers. "Davis has always demonstrated a level of technical ability that far surpassed what was required of him," said desktop support manager Amanda Spear, who is Chen's supervisor.
Chen will graduate in May with a bachelor's degree in molecular, cellular and developmental biology. He's acquired his extensive programming expertise in his free time. Though unsure what he wants to do after graduation, he is considering graduate school in computer science. "I could always branch out into bioinformatics, the study of genomes that has disease research applications," he said.
The engineering behind computer viruses and worms has evolved, Chen said, but there's no clear reason why hackers continue to create them. "I'm sure anti-Microsoft sentiment has something to do with it. I think that with the Internet, it's a lot easier now for people to write and spread these things."
What does Chen recommend to ensure your computer doesn't catch the next worm or virus? "Keep everything up to date. If you're running Windows, go to the Windows update Web site at least once a month. Check to make sure your virus detection software is updated. Be careful online -- use common sense. Don't open email attachments unless you specifically asked for them from a friend."