MESSAGE
| DATE | 2005-08-17 |
| FROM | From: "Inker, Evan"
|
| SUBJECT | Subject: [NYLXS - HANGOUT] New worms hit U.S. media outlets, companies
|
New worms hit U.S. media outlets, companies
Worms target Microsoft's Windows 2000 operating system
http://www.computerworld.com/securitytopics/security/virus/story/0,10801,103
975,00.html?source=NLT_AM&nid=103975
News Story by Reed Stevenson
AUGUST 17, 2005 (REUTERS) - Several new computer worms were being blamed for
causing computer system outages at some media outlets and companies in the
U.S. yesterday.
The worms, including two called IRCBOT.WORM and RBOT.CBQ, exploit a recently
discovered flaw in Microsoft Corp.'s Windows 2000 operating system. They
were causing PCs at more than 100 U.S. companies to restart repeatedly and
potentially exposed them to attackers who could take control of a system.
"This is the most significant threat we've seen in at least 12 months," said
Vincent Gullotto, vice president of the antivirus emergency response team at
McAfee Inc.
But Symantec Corp. and McAfee, two large computer security companies, as
well as Microsoft Corp., said that damage to computer systems yesterday was
limited and not likely to cause widespread havoc like malicious software
programs such as SQL Slammer and MyDoom.
CNN, breaking into regular programming, reported on the air that PCs at the
cable news network were affected by a worm that caused them to restart
repeatedly.
The New York Times and ABC News also reported system outages earlier
yesterday, causing some to suspect that another recent worm called Zotob was
behind the outages.
Gullotto said, however, that the newly discovered worms are different from
Zotob, even though they all, including Zotob, appear to exploit the same
vulnerability in the Plug-and-Play feature in Windows 2000, which runs on
less than half of the world's PCs.
Microsoft, which warned users last week of three newly found "critical"
security flaws in its software, urged users to update the software on their
PCs to prevent them from being infected (see "Microsoft patches three
'critical' Windows flaws").
Microsoft said users with properly updated software, antivirus software and
a firewall can avoid being infected by the worm, a malicious software
program that replicates itself over a computer network.
The new IRCBOT.WORM and RBOT.CBQ worms are different in that they can be
controlled by IRC servers or networked computers that manage chat sessions
over the Internet, security experts said.
"We haven't seen any huge uptick or impact today," said a spokeswoman for
Microsoft's security unit. "A fairly small number of customers are being
impacted."
Symantec said that it has heard from at least 100 organizations that a group
of about eight viruses were targeting individual organizations and not the
Internet as a whole.
"This is not across the Internet but inside organizations," said David Cole,
a product management director at Symantec.
CNN, a division of Time Warner Inc., said that computer systems at General
Electric Co., United Parcel Service Inc. and Caterpillar Inc. were affected
by system outages as well.
A GE spokesman said that there appeared to be no problems with GE's internal
network, while UPS said that only a small number of its computers were
affected by a worm or system outage.
"There is no impact whatsoever on operations, customer-facing computer
systems, service or delivery," said UPS spokesman Norman Black.
Caterpillar officials were not immediately available for comment.
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