Hundreds of students living in Kansas University dorms are not reading this.

The residents of five Daisy Hill residence halls, Jayhawker Towers and the Stouffer Place housing complex lost Internet access this week as KU officials tried to prevent a computer worm from spreading.

Computer worms are self-replicating programs similar to viruses. Unlike viruses, the computer user does not have to open an e-mail attachment or run a program for the worm to harm their machine. In the past year, the Mydoom and Lovegate worms affected computers worldwide.

KU officials have met several times to find solutions, said Allison Lopez, a spokesperson for KU’s information services. Some computer labs on campus are open late, and university administrators will decide on or before Friday whether to continue those extended hours. Students can call a university hotline at 864-1100 for updated computer lab hours. Fliers will also be posted in the buildings on Daisy Hill.

“Helping our students get through this – especially in the last few weeks of the semester – is our top priority,” Lopez said.

Information Services technicians are still assessing the damage and finding solutions to the problem.

The worm that has affected KU students is called a ‘bot,’ or a smart-worm that can hide itself in a person’s computer and infect others’ computers without being detected. Many students did not download Microsoft’s security updates in the past month, which seems to have prevented some computers from becoming infected, said Associate Director of University Relations Todd Cohen.

“Pretty much anybody who didn’t got it,” Cohen said.

The timeline for fixing the problem and restoring Internet connections to Daisy Hill is still uncertain. Cohen said the analogy he was given was that understanding the problem and fixing it is like learning a new language. “When we’ll be fluent, we don’t know,” he said.

Sunflower Broadband customers “are not really impacted by anything,” said Sunflower Broadband Information Technology Manager Frank Wiles. Sunflower Broadband provides Internet, telephone and cable services to Lawrence-area residents.