Radio New Zealand - Te Reo Irirangi o Aotearoa

Data stick crashed 3000 hospital computers

Updated at 2:47 pm on 12 March 2010

Waikato District Health Board has confirmed that the origin of a computer virus that crashed its system for three days, causing major disruption, was a USB stick.

The Conficker virus shut down the board's 3000 computers in December, although its hospitals were able to continue functioning.

The board says the system was infected by the virus entering via a data stick and staff have been instructed not to use them.

It says a report into the computer failure will be released in the next fortnight.

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