'Storm Trojan' ignites worm war
680697
The "Storm Trojan" is at it again and is now spreading via AOL Instant Messenger, Google Talk and Yahoo Messenger, security researchers said;.
430119
Researchers who have been probing the Storm Trojan in an effort to fight it said they aren't afraid of the malware, despite comments to the contrary this week from Josh Corman of IBM's Internet Security Systems Inc.
342444
A new worm has been discovered in the wild that&#39;s not just settling for invading users&#39; PCs - it wants to invade their homes, too.
768120
Although the infamous Storm worm is known as the world's most dangerous botnet, security experts say there's an up-and-comer called Nugache entering the scene.
158182
Storm Worm spam switches from featuring Christmas strippers to New Year messages.
755872
(InfoWorld) - During the past two years, security experts and software vendors have downplayed the threat of so-called worm viruses, but new evidence suggests that the attacks are still as dangerous, if not more so, than ever. While the enormous mass-mailing worm viruses of years past -- such as the well-known MyDoom, Sobig, and Slammer attacks -- that were aimed at crippling IT infrastructure have all but disappeared, smaller outbreaks that aim to load financially-motivated malware onto end users' computers -- such as the recent Storm Worm -- will continue to menace the Internet, according to researchers. Consensus opinion among security experts has been that as businesses and consumers improved their desktop security tools and computing habits, it became harder for malware writers to lure the same volumes of people with worms. This trend pushed the attackers away from creation of the self-propagating threats and further into financially-motivated crimeware, market watchers observed. However, the continued spread and modification of Storm Worm, which first surfaced in mid-Jan. 2007, could illustrate an emerging breed of the attacks that is likely to trouble users in years to come. On Feb. 27, workers at security software maker Secure Computing released details of a newly-emerging variant of Storm Worm that adds a Web-based social engineering component to the attack's more traditional e-mail and IM delivery models. According to San Jose-based Secure, the new version of Storm Worm sits on an infected computer and waits for a user to post a message to a Webmail system or online bulletin board site, and then adds a link to those communications that sends anyone who clicks on the URL to a malware-laden Web page. Threats that sit on the Storm-generated sites include variants of the attack itself, along with a range of crimeware programs aimed to steal sensitive personal or financial information. Viruses like Storm, which can also be classified as a Trojan rootkit, reflect the manner in which attackers will leverage the time-honored worm platform to pass along their latest work, said Dmitri Alperovitch, principal research scientist at Secure. "We're not discounting the threat from targeted financial attacks, but those tend to take a lot of work to pull off, as the attacker must do recon on the organization or user and put a good deal of effort into each target," Alperovitch said. "The payback on those attacks is probably greater, but these types of worms like the new variants of Storm can pay for themselves pretty quickly; there's little doubt we'll see more designed in this manner." In addition to using the worm approach to distribute cutting-edge malware, the Storm variations have adopted a number of other characteristics typically associated with newer attacks. The threat code itself is being changed at a rapid pace to avoid detection by antivirus systems, according to the Secure researcher, and is using an ever-changing list of URLs and IP addresses to deliver its payload and fly under the radar. The swiftly-changing profile of Storm Worm will make it hard for traditional security products to keep up with such threats, he said. "With this added technique of constant morphing and many new variants, I can't imagine how signature-based based technologies will ever cope with this sort of thing -- people truly need behavior-based tools to stop them," said Alperovitch. "We haven't seen the mass mailing, mass targeting worms that were big in the past, and Storm is not mass targeting compared to some of those, but the Web component will allow it to propagate much faster, so we'll have to keep a close eye on it." Anti-virus software makers agreed that traditional signature-based tools alone will not suffice to stop the new breed of worm, but they said that the attacks can be thwarted using a combination of those products and newer behavior-based systems. Officials at AV market leader Symantec, based in Cupertino, Calif., said that they view Storm as more of a Trojan than a worm, based on the fact that its spread is relying on social engineering methods versus automated propagation. Either way, users should rely on a defense-in-depth security strategy to protect themselves from either form of attack, according to Dave Cole, director of Symantec's Security Response team. "The major threat of today isn't the worm of yesteryear, but really the Trojan attack as the designers are using really sophisticated social engineering to trick people into downloading," Cole said. "The classical worms are still out there, we still see a ton, but the reality is they are not infecting nearly as many people because of the defenses out there; these new ones are a bigger threat." While behavior-based tools such as IDSes may represent the most effective form of defense against the rapidly-changing worm threats of today, users should still employ signature-based anti-virus applications to protect against anything that sneaks through those filters, according to the Symantec researcher. Dan Hubbard, vice president of security research at San Diego-based Websense, said that much as with every other breed of malware, worms will be increasingly laced together with different types of attacks to help increase their reach and destruction. He said worms won't likely become the leading virus format again anytime soon, according to the expert, but they will remain on malware artists' palettes as yet another option when they are creating their latest work. "At a macro level, e-mail only worms have become less frequent, but their use in combination with other attacks is getting more sophisticated and will likely continue to appear," Hubbard said. "Automation will be used to deliver new variants even faster than ever, and they will be self-updating and self-modifying; this is part of the overall increase we're seeing in the variety of ways that people are being infected over the Web."
257127
A new worm whose payload includes the SDBot trojan tries to install a &quot;sniffer,&quot; seeking to use infected computers to capture login and banking information for other computers on the same network.
692830
A new worm is making the rounds, attacking some business computers through a known -- and already patched -- flaw in a popular antivirus software suite from security firm Symantec.
518928
The criminals behind the Storm botnet waited until the last minute, but they&#39;ve finally started delivering unwanted Christmas presents.Starting Monday, Storm-infected machines began sending out Christmas-themed spam in yet another attempt to trick victims into downloading malicious software. In this case, the site is named Merrychristmasdude.com, and the malware is a variation of the Storm Trojan horse program that has been plaguing systems around the world since January.The e-mails contain titles such as &quot;Find Some Christmas Tail,&quot; &quot;Warm Up this Christmas&quot; and &quot;Mrs. Clause Is Out Tonight!&quot;One message reads &quot;Yo, I am pretty sure this is up your alley, from the things you have told me before. This will be the best 2 min you spend this holiday. hehe.&quot;Once the user clicks on the link to Merrychristmasdude.com, he is taken to a Christmas-themed Web site with photos of scantily clad women and offered a free download. That download is a malicious program, called Email-Worm.Win32.Zhelatin.pd by F-Secure, that connects to a P-to-P (peer-to-peer) network and begins downloading even more malware.Storm&#39;s creators have built up networks of infected PCs -- called botnets -- over the past year by using a combination of sophisticated hacking tricks to avoid detection and by spamming potential victims with clever and timely e-mail messages. The network is called Storm because its original messages offered victims video of the deadly storms that battered Europe a year ago, but has also perfected the tactic of sending out holiday-themed messages.Security experts estimate that the&#160;Storm has infected more than 15 million computers over the past year, although the current size of the network is much smaller than that.This latest variant is being blocked by some antivirus vendors, including Kaspersky, Microsoft and Symantec, according to a technical write-up of the Christmas outbreak.The SANS Internet Storm Center recommends that administrators block Web and e-mail access to the Merrychristmasdude.com domain.
750482
In 1988, a student unleashed a self-replicating worm that halted thousands of computers--and lit a fire under online security.
172876
Domains of several new phishing sites are cropping up with known Storm worm domains. F-Secure researchers think phishers are leasing parts of the larger botnet.
741621
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¦
372530
A new worm targeting a flaw in Sun Microsystems Inc.'s Solaris 10 OS delivers crude artsy payloads, including a drawing of a turkey in ASCII text.
485062
Yet another Trojan horse is luring the Internet with a need to infect Symbian based smart phones. SimWorks International, an anti-virus firm, issued an alert earlier this week informing the users of the Trojanâs existence.
527366
A new worm has surfaced affecting the AOL Instant Messenger network, security firm FaceTime reported this week. The malware disguises itself as a JPEG image to deliver a Trojan horse onto a PC when executed.
691662
A Valentine&#39;s themed outbreak of the Storm worm has been detected. Malicious e-mails are being received across the globe -- they contain a Web link, which directs users to a Web site where they can supposedly download a Valentine&#39;s card, but in fact are infected with&#160;the Storm bug.&#160;The virus mirrors the fake Christmas and New Year messages seen in previous months.According to Greg Day, security analyst at McAfee, the virus will try to steal personal information from your PC, bring down its security defenses and use your PC to send out millions of junk e-mails.&quot;There are about 10 million PCs worldwide infected with the Storm worm. These threats have suddenly spiked from 0 percent of all spam e-mails to 1.5 percent and they are continuing to rise as we draw closer to Valentine&#39;s Day and more people are fooled into downloading the malicious file,&quot; he commented.&quot;With all the hype that surrounds Valentine&#39;s Day, it was only to be expected that they (the people behind Storm) would use a similar tactic and exploit people&#39;s eagerness to receive Valentine&#39;s cards,&quot; added Diego d&#39;Ambra of e-mail security company&#160;SoftScan.PC Advisor is an InfoWorld affiliate.
30667
Many unhappy returns Thursday marked the first anniversary of the infamous Storm Worm. Created by a Russian-based criminal network, the malware rapidly infected millions of PCs in Europe and North America and continues to be a problem.â¦