OSAC Item (Printer Friendly Version)

[an error occurred while processing this directive]

CurzTech News Network

OSAC Item (Printer Friendly Version)
from The Australian on Tuesday, April 01, 2003

HACKER activity has increased sharply in recent weeks due to the war in Iraq, but the attacks have not caused serious problems, according to Trend Micro.

The antivirus company says virus writers have unleashed several new threats in March, but none had spread very rapidly or developed into serious problems.

The main results have been defacement of web pages.

Trend Micro says no co-ordinated major attacks or disruption of internet traffic has been reported.

The company's list of the 10 most common viruses for March was still dominated by long-running "mixed threats", such as FunLove, Klez.H and Nimda.

Of the three war-related viruses discovered in late March, the most significant was the Ganda worm, which spreads by email, with text in both English and Swedish.

Its impact is greatest in Scandinavian countries.

Ganda uses war-related subject lines and messages to attract users' curiosity, such as offering Iraqi spy pictures, or a George Bush screensaver.

The worm also contains a message in the virus code in which the writer, "Uncle Roger", complains about the Swedish educational system.

On March 26, Swedish police arrested a suspect, who admitted playing a role in the spread of the Ganda worm.

In a similar vein, the Prune virus carries a subject line "Iraq Crisis" and claims to contain US government material.

A third war-related virus, the Wanor worm, appears to be intended as a political protest, Trend Micro says.

The most widespread new threat for the month is the Deloder worm, notable for its effort to attack users who set weak or obvious passwords, Trend Micro says.

The worm tries to log on to computers using a list of potential passwords.

Trend Micro says it detected the Deloder worm or its backdoor component on about 7000 PCs in March. The top threat, FunLove was detected 300,000 times.

[an error occurred while processing this directive]