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Computer virus writers at war, security firm says |
2005-08-18 |
War of the Worms! Computer worms that have brought down systems around the world in recent days are starting to attack each other, Finnish software security firm F-Secure said on Wednesday. "We seem to have a botwar on our hands," said Mikko Hypponen, chief research officer at F-Secure. "There appear to be three different virus-writing gangs turning out new worms at an alarming rate, as if they were competing to build the biggest network of infected machines." Hypponen said in a statement that varieties of three worms -- "Zotob," "Bozori" and "IRCbot" -- were still exploiting a gap in Microsoft Corp.'s Windows 2000 operating system on computers that had not had the flaw repaired and were not shielded by firewalls. "The latest variants of Bozori even remove competing viruses like Zotob from the infected machines," Hypponen said in a statement on the company's Web site. (http://www.f-secure.com) The worms were blamed for major system trouble at some media outlets and companies in the United States on Tuesday, causing personal computers to restart repeatedly and potentially making them vulnerable to attack. Microsoft and the top computer security companies, Symantec Corp. and McAfee Inc., said damage to systems on Tuesday had been limited and was unlikely to cause widespread havoc like that which resulted from other malicious software such as "SQL Slammer" and "MyDoom." |
Posted by:Spot |
#8 "chief research officer at F-Secure" How secure? Well, that's pretty secure. Jonathan, That's not true. Linux, OpenBSD, and Apache gets attacked all the time. But, it doesn't make to MSM because 94% of the world's pc's run Windows. Firefox/Mozilla uses Java and IE uses Active X. Java and Active X attacks are very prevelant and these browser's are definitely vulnerable. If you go to the geek sites, there are thousands of hits. (HIDS)Host based intrusion detection system is your only defense. HIDS prevents any windows kernel manipulation or buffer overflows. |
Posted by: Poison Reverse 2005-08-18 18:12 |
#7 Uh-oh! Visions of gray goo... |
Posted by: Xbalanke 2005-08-18 18:06 |
#6 "Computer virus writers at war" Any chance they'll actually kill each other? (not their viruses, them) |
Posted by: Barbara Skolaut 2005-08-18 17:23 |
#5 When thieves fall out, good men benefit. As long as they don't run Windows 2000. (Linux, Firefox, and Thunderbird -- your tools for a worm-free PC!) |
Posted by: Jonathan 2005-08-18 12:39 |
#4 Just hook up all those computers to me, and everything will be fine.... |
Posted by: Skynet 2005-08-18 11:09 |
#3 "Sarah Connor?" |
Posted by: The Terminator 2005-08-18 11:02 |
#2 Geekfight! |
Posted by: BH 2005-08-18 09:55 |
#1 Battlebots! |
Posted by: Seafarious 2005-08-18 09:44 |