Thursday, August 14, 2003
Security services firm LURHQ Corp. says it has discovered a worm (codename MSBlast) which attacks Windows operating systems spread across the globe on Tuesday, infecting and crashing home and office computers faster than technicians could install safeguards.
At least 124,000 computers using Microsoft Corp's Windows software have been infected worldwide, according to a sample by Symantec Corp's Security Response sensor network. While in Taiwan there were over 1,000 companies in Taiwan over past two days, an anti-virus expert said yesterday. The worm, MSBlast.exe, is about 6 Kbytes in size and takes about 20 seconds to infect a vulnerable system and begin scanning for new systems to infect.
Because this worm is attacking a vulnerability found in Windows NT 4.0, 2000, XP, and Microsoft Windows Server 2003, security experts believe there will be no shortage of unpatched and at-risk systems. The "Blaster" worm has since Tuesday affected more than 50,000 computers, including 40,000 computers today, and clogged Internet networks, according to Ann Teng, an associate manager of Trend Micro Inc.
While the experts from LURHQ said they have obtained a copy of the worm, MSBlast is designed to launch a denial-of-service attack, specifically a Syn Flood, against Microsoft's Windowsupdate.com Web site on Aug. 16. Computers infected by Blaster scan the Internet looking for other machines running Windows that have an open security hole. All users including the consumers, small businesses and large companies are advice to patch up the vulnerable systems to prevent from infecting and further damage by the Blaster.
By: DocMemory
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