February 04, 2005
MSN Messenger Attacked By Worm
Anti-virus company TrendMicro is warning that a new variant of the Bropia worm is using MSN Messenger to spread.
Bropia.F is a worm packaged with a second, more dangerous worm that tries to exploit known issues in unpatched computers.
The latest variant was discovered late Wednesday, according to TrendMicro. The virus spreads by sending itself as a picture of a roast chicken with tan lines to all available or online contacts. It also releases the Agabot.ajc virus on the infected PC.
February 03, 2005
Blaster Worm: Teen Sentenced
A teenager was sentenced Friday to 11/2 years in prison for unleashing a variant of the "Blaster" Internet worm that crippled 48,000 computers in 2003.
Jeffrey Lee Parson, 19, of Hopkins, Minnesota, will serve his time at a low-security prison and must perform 10 months of community service. He had faced up to 10 years in prison, but the judge took pity on the teen, saying his neglectful parents were to blame for the psychological troubles that led to his actions.
"(The Internet) has created a dark hole, a dungeon if you will, for people who have mental illnesses or people who are lonely," U.S. District Judge Marsha Pechman said. "I didn't see any parent standing there saying, 'It's not a healthy thing to lock yourself in a room and create your own reality."'
Defense lawyers said Parson feared leaving the house and his parents provided little support. He pleaded guilty last summer to one count of intentionally causing or attempting to cause damage to a protected computer.
Parson created a Blaster version that launched a distributed denial-of-service attack against a Microsoft Windows Update Web site as well as personal computers. Blaster and its variants, also known as the LovSan virus, crippled networks worldwide.
Parson's lawyers said he has made great strides since his arrest. They also credited him with making a Seattle School District video warning teens of the dangers of Internet vandalism.
Parson apologized to the court and to Microsoft, saying, "I know I've made a huge mistake and I hurt a lot of people and I feel terrible." He will still have to pay restitution to Microsoft and to people whose computers were affected in an amount to be determined at a hearing next month.
Parson was charged in Seattle because Microsoft is based in suburban Redmond.
Zombie Trick Sends Spam Sky-High
According to the SpamHaus Project -- a U.K.-based antispam compiler of blacklists that block 8 billion messages a day--a new piece of malicious software has been created that takes over a PC. This "zombie" computer is then used to send spam via the mail server of that PC's Internet service provider. This means the junk mail appears to come from the ISP, making it very hard for an antispam blacklist to block it.
Previously, zombie PCs have been used as mail servers themselves, sending spam e-mails directly to recipients.
"The Trojan is able to order proxies to send spam upstream to the ISP," said Steve Linford, director of SpamHaus.
Linford believes that this Trojan horse was created by the same people who write spamming software.
ISPs in the United States may have already been hit. "We've seen a surge in spam coming from major ISPs. Now all of the ISPs are having large amounts of spam going out from their mail servers," Linford said.
This will cause serious problems for the e-mail infrastructure, as it is impractical to block mail with domain names from large ISPs. Linford predicts that ISPs will see a growth in the volume of bulk mail they send and receive over the next two months, with spam levels rising from 75 percent of all e-mail to around 95 percent within a year.
