Gizza job, plead virus writers
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Three new MyDoom variants have been found in the wild that contain not only malicious code but a plea for a job. MyDoom U, V and W attempt to download a Trojan called Surila onto users&#39; computers, which would
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A new virus outbreak emerged on Thursday that packs a baffling message: a photograph of accused German virus author Sven Jaschan that security officials believe to be a geeky taunt from a rival gang of computer programmers.
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Everything must go Malware authors have developed a talking Trojan capable of taunting its victims even as it goes about its work trashing their PCs.â¦
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Microsoft is moving to counter some scathing comments regarding a security paper authored by researchers at its Cambridge, England, facility.The paper, &quot;Sampling Strategies for Epidemic-Style Information Dissemination,&quot; looks at how worms sometimes inefficiently spread their code.The research explores how a more efficient method could, for example, be used for distributing patches or other software. The advantage would be that patches could be distributed from PC to PC, rather than from a central server.That method would reduce the load on a server, and patches would be distributed faster. But the patches would have the same qualities as a computer worm, a generally malicious file.Since a story about the paper appeared on Thursday in the New Scientist magazine, the paper has been roundly assailed.&quot;This is a stupid idea,&quot; wrote Bruce Schneier, a security expert, author and CTO of Mountain View, Calif.-based enterprise security vendor BT Counterpane, on Tuesday, before quoting a passage from the New Scientist story on his blog.Schneier wrote that the idea of so-called &quot;benevolent worms&quot; comes up every few years.However, a worm is designed to run without the consent of a user, which doesn&#39;t make it a good method of software distribution, Schneier wrote. The worm patching technique could also make the patches hard to uninstall or interrupt during installation, he wrote.Worms designed to distribute software patches could also be hacked to distribute malicious software, wrote Randy Abrams, director of education for security vendor Eset, in his regular e-mail commentary.Forced patching is also troublesome since some patches may not be compatible with critical software, Abrams wrote.&quot;Breaking into computers is a bad idea,&quot; Abrams said.A Microsoft spokesman said on Monday that the New Scientist story is not inaccurate. However, the writer of the story &quot;sexed&quot; up the research paper a bit, particularly with the headline that used the phrase &quot;friendly worms,&quot; the spokesman said.In response to the criticism, Microsoft said it doesn&#39;t intend to develop patch worms.&quot;This was not the primary scenario targeted for this research,&quot; according to a statement.The company also said it will continue to let customers decide how and when they apply security updates.One of the paper&#39;s authors, Milan Vojnovic, said in a statement that there were no plans to incorporate the ideas into Microsoft&#39;s products. Efforts to reach Vojnovic for comment were unsuccessful.
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For the past few years, viruses have attacked Microsoft&#39;s operating system, Web browser or e-mail programs seemingly on a weekly basis.
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A virus infection points up the dangers of making it all too easy for visitors to get onto the company network, Mathias Thurman finds.
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Security firms are warning about a virus that tries to cash in on interest in David Beckham.
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A VIRUS WRITER has decided that the wants to see the look on your face when you discover your computer is infected by his handiwork.
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Evil twin hash bash Antivirus firms are concerned about the emergence of techniques that could render meaningless the use of checksums to mark applications as safe.â¦
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Con-pensation Chinese PC users whose machines were crippled by a dodgy software update from Symantec have two weeks to apply for compensation. The company has announced that the 50,000 users affected by the error are entitled to some free Norton anti-virus licenses.â¦
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Virus writer Sven Jaschan, who claimed responsibility for the Sasser and Netsky worms, has been given a job at an internet security company.
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The latest email virus &quot;Zafi.D virus&quot; is certain to bring sadness and not joy to many surfers over the next few days/weeks.
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Here's a zip archive containing the source of the last 10 years of Scripting News. Since Scripting News existed before blogs were invented, I went ahead and included the stuff that I blogged before there were blogs. I hope this isn't too confusing!  "cheesecake" PS: Scott Karp asks if blogs can do journalism. Try this question. Can journalists do journalism? At best they seem to be able to copy each other, so mistakes propogate.  We've made so many accomplishments, both before and after the coining of the term, Karp for example starts with VIgnette. In 1997 if you told someone the functions of Vignette could be provided to millions of people virtually for free they wouldn't have believed you. (This is factual btw, I did, and wasn't believed.)  They also thought syndication would be done by the big publishing companies, something unweildy called ICE. We thought it should be simpler so that anyone could support it on both ends, and we won. The journalists have no record of this probably because they believed the big companies behind ICE and ignored the low-tech stuff. Jorn Barger used my software to do his "web log" -- why isn't that part of the story? Well it isn't if all you think is important is the choosing of the name.
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The IT industry&#39;s war against virus writers has seen battles won on both sides this year. Sven Jaschan, the 18-year-old German responsible for spreading 70 per cent of viruses in the first six months of 2004
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Malware with manaces Virus writers are revisiting the tactic of holding data on compromised machines to ransom with a new strain of so-called "ransom-ware" Trojan.â¦
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Antivirus companies urge e-mail caution as new variants of worm hit the Net.
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Many of you can't be trusted with your own computers. Stupidity isn't the problem. It's laziness, mostly, combined with a penny-wise stinginess that resents the $40 price of a good antivirus program.