Conficker Worm Hits U.S. Hospitals, Infecting Computers and Equipment [Viruses]

Cnet says that hundreds of critical hospital devices across the U.S. have been infected by the Conficker worm. The number of hospitals affected wasn't disclosed, but the problem isn't thought to be widespread.

Cybersecurity expert Marcus Sachs broke the news at a security conference in San Francisco, raising the question of what would happen if this were to happen to millions of machines in the medical industry. According to sachs, the devices affected were hospital computers and devices used to control critical equipment, such as heart monitors and MRI machines.

No one is quite sure how the computers acquired the worms to begin with, but most of the Windows 2000/NT machines were to old to benefit from Microsoft's October patch which fixed many of the vulnerabilities Conficker preyed on. [Cnet via Slashdot]

My Comment:

1) Why are critical hospital devices connected to the Internet?. They still have anti-virus programs, for those dumber students who choose to not scan their flash drives. Any critical devices should be kept in quarantine (never connected to the web).

2) Why aren't critical hospital devices updated more frequently if they are connected to the web. I mean, it's not that hard, and it prevents crap like this from happening.