Fergie's Tech Blog

"Business" Worms Wreak Havoc From Inside

And, unfortunately, this is exactly what I have witnessed firsthand.

Gregg Kiezer writes in TechWeb News:

One of the week's dozen or so bots can be called the first "business" worm, a security expert argued Friday.

"On the face of it, Bozori is no different than earlier Internet worms like Blaster or Sasser," said David Emm, a senior technology consultant for the Moscow-based Kaspersky Labs, in an e-mail to TechWeb. "It uses an exploit to spread directly to vulnerable machines. Yet there's no global epidemic. We've seen no tell-tale signs of an epidemic on the Internet. And we've had no reports of infection from individual users."

Other experts seconded that last statement. Radialpoint, a security provider to broadband ISPs, said that its customers are reporting low infection rates among their users, even those without anti-virus defenses. "We attribute this to the fact that the virus [sic] only targets Windows 2000 machines," said a Radialpoint spokesperson.

"There's no question that this worm is spreading. However, it seems to be confined to localized 'explosions' inside large corporations," Emm continued. "These organizations, typically made up of 'small internets' behind heavily defended Internet gateways, have experienced infection."

posted by Fergie @ 8/20/2005 08:24:00 AM