February 22, 2009 “Comic Sans” Virus (CSV) outbreak infects millions of websites worldwide

In the early hours of Sunday, 22nd February 2009, a savage virus called ‘CSV’ began to infect millions of websites worldwide.

Originating from an unknown source in the UK at around 2am GMT, The “Comic Sans” Virus ‘CSV’ started corrupting the CSS files of websites through a server loophole, leaving them defaced with the “Comic Sans” typeface.

By 9am GMT, an estimated 10 million websites were infected with ‘CSV’, by which time the suspected ‘loophole’ in the servers configuration, at the originating London Exchange center, was plugged.

By 9:31am GMT, over 5 million websites were returned to their original state, leaving the rest still infected with ‘CSV’.

A patch download has been created to remedy any websites still infected. This patch can be downloaded at the bottom of this article.

Evidence of infection

Apple

Estimated infection time: 3 hours

Microsoft

Estimated infection time: 6 hours

UK newspapers

Times Online

Estimated infection time: 1 hour

Telegraph

Estimated infection time: 2 hours

Friends

Estimated infection time: 15 minutes

Bronco (Dave Naylor)

Estimated infection time: still infected

Estimated infection time: still infected

Reaction

Dave Naylor from Bronco: “I woke up to the news that the CSV infected our main website. After a few moments of deliberation, we decided to take action, much against the wishes of my wife who actually liked the change.”

Mogens Elsberg from Microsoft: “I see this little f***** has come back to bite us in the a**! Maybe we should have scrapped VINCENT CONNARE’s 1995 font for a less volatile alternate. Thanks for the heads up Frog”

John Smith, Chief Executive of BBC worldwide: “We think the British public will welcome the change, we may revert the fix in the next couple of days.”

The Patch

If your website seems to have been infected by the CSV you can manually patch your website by downloading the file below:

CSV patch 1.21, Multi-OS compatible: CSV patch.jpg