Bonum Certa Men Certa

Windows Botnets Go Out of Control, Obama Web Site Delivers Windows Malware

THERE ARE SO MANY MICROSOFT failure stories to share today that it's hard to decide where to start.

Sites Hijacked



Microsoft's security nightmares as of late [1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7] are where we begin by presenting the following report about a government site in Australia getting cracked and doing enough harm that it needed to be shut down.

Like you, I get masses of spam. I knew it wasn't from jobs.nsw.gov.au no matter how much it pretended to be. I deleted it figuring it was “just another” bit of junk mail, although I was surprised to find one purporting to be from the NSW Government job board; that was definitely a new one on me!

Had I thought about it deeper I might have considered this was no ordinary spam. This time there was a direct relationship between how the spammers got my e-mail address and the organisation they purported to represent.

It turns out the Department of Commerce has taken this whole incident very seriously indeed, and far more than common garden-variety spam would necessitate.

If you visit the site jobs.nsw.gov.au you will see it is inaccessible, and in fact, has been for a week. A message advises that the system is down for “system maintenance.”


The site is powered by Microsoft IIS.

Moving on a little, it turns out that Obama's Web site too is causing harm. Some pages in it are distributing Windows malware.

Web security firm Websense reports that malicious hackers have registered multiple bogus user accounts on My.BarackObama.com. The site allows legitimate punters to join groups, raise funds, or creates blogs. The griefers have established blogs with fake YouTube clips, ostensibly offering grumble flicks.


According to some new statistics, there is a sharp increase in distribution of Windows malware, with more malicious sites than one can practically keep track of:

AVG is seeing between 200,000 to 300,000 new Web sites per day hosting code that can in some cases result in a PC being infected with malware just by visiting the site, said Roger Thompson, AVG's chief research officer.


Zombies/Botnets Explode



Conficker is still running wild and it's draining resources along its path (human resources and Web resources).

The world's top virus hunters are watching every move made by the attacker in control of a nasty new Internet worm — referred to as "downadup" or "conficker."


The number of infected Windows PCs keeps growing fast.

A virulent computer virus has infected as many as 15 million computers around the world so far, according to various estimates.

The virus -- a self-replicating computer worm known as Downadup, Conficker or Kido -- spreads across computer networks using Microsoft Windows software which have not been patched or updated properly. Microsoft issued a patch that fixes the vulnerability the virus exploits last October.


This is also covered here.

Computer experts are preparing to respond to further virus outbreaks and security threats posed by the Windows worm, known as Conficker, Kido and Downadup, which has infected more than 15 million PCs worldwide.


Had Microsoft cared about security rather than premature announcements (vapourware) and irresponsible releases, the Internet would have been a better and safer place to travel.

"Our products just aren't engineered for security."

--Brian Valentine, Microsoft executive



Broken glass

Comments

Recent Techrights' Posts

Open Source Initiative (OSI) Privacy Fiasco in Detail: The OSI Does Not Respect Anybody's Privacy
The surveillance mafia that bans dissent or key people (even co-founders) with dissenting views
 
Links 31/03/2025: China Tensions, Bombs Falling in Myanmar After Earthquake
Links for the day
Gemini Links 31/03/2025: Falling Out of Love With Tech, Sunsetting openSNP
Links for the day
R.T.O. at IBM in Texas and Atlanta (State of Georgia) Expected as "Soft Layoffs" Catalyst This Coming Year
It also sounds like more IBM layoffs are in the making
Law Firms Can Also Lose Their Licence for Clearly Misusing It
The bottom line is, never made the false assumption that because you can pile up SLAPPs in a docket you will not suffer from bad reputation or even get disbarred
Link between institutional abuse, Swiss jurists, Debianism and FSFE
Reprinted with permission from Daniel Pocock
LLM Slop Piggybacking News About GNU/Linux and Distorting It
new examples
Links 31/03/2025: Press and Democracy Under Further Attacks in the US, Attitudes Towards Slop Sour
Links for the day
Gemini Links 31/03/2025: More X-Filesposting and Dreaming in Emacs
Links for the day
Over at Tux Machines...
GNU/Linux news for the past day
IRC Proceedings: Sunday, March 30, 2025
IRC logs for Sunday, March 30, 2025
Links 30/03/2025: Security Breaches, Crackdowns on Dissent/Rival Politicians
Links for the day
Gemini Links 30/03/2025: London Soundtrack Festival, Superbloom, gmiCAPTCHA
Links for the day
Phasing Out Vista 10 in Nations Where ~90% of Windows Users Still Rely on It
Recipe for another Microsoft disaster
The Cost of Pursuing the Much-Needed Reform/Shield Against Strategic Lawsuits Against Public Participation (SLAPPs)
“It is curious that physical courage should be so common in the world and moral courage so rare.”
The LLM Bubble is About to Implode, Gimmicks and Financial Shell Games Cannot Prevent That, Only Delay It
To inflate the bubble MElon is now doing the classic trick of buying from oneself for a fictional value
Links 30/03/2025: Contagious Ideas, Signal Leak, and Squashing Lousy Patents
Links for the day
Links 30/03/2025: "Quantum Randomness" and "F-1 Visa Revoked" in US
Links for the day
Gemini Links 30/03/2025: US as a Threat, Returning to the WWW
Links for the day
Links 30/03/2025: Judge Blocks Dismantling Of VOA, Turkey Arrested Many Journalists
Links for the day
Over at Tux Machines...
GNU/Linux news for the past day
IRC Proceedings: Saturday, March 29, 2025
IRC logs for Saturday, March 29, 2025
Judges Would Never Rule for Men Who Strangle Women or Against Women Who Merely Wrote Articles About Abuse They Had Received From Men
We don't intend to do "trial by media", so we won't be disclosing claims and defences until it's over
Windows is an Unnatural Disaster, It is Also Avoidable
there's a wide window of opportunity opening
Gemini Links 29/03/2025: Less YouTube and More Station
Links for the day
In Some Countries, Such as Thailand, Firefox is Already Measured at Less Than 2% (One Day Firefox Will Get Blocked, Not Only Lack Support)
Web consolidation around Chrom-isms will doom the Web as we know it
Killing the News With Spam and Slop Benefits Those Whose Desire is an Uninformed Population
adoption of Free software depends indirectly on political activities/activism
Links 29/03/2025: Trademarks Battles, Fires Destroy More Than 3,000 South Korean Homes
Links for the day
Open Source Initiative (OSI) Privacy Fiasco in Detail: An Introduction
Perhaps tomorrow or perhaps next week we'll share more information about what happened and what was reported to the California Privacy Protection Agency
Links 29/03/2025: More Crackdowns on Science, "Hey Hi" Slopping is Flopping
Links for the day
IBM's BS (Bait, Switch) Regarding Ways to Stay Onboard
PIPs, RTOs, and forced relocations are just an illusion of choice (or ability to recover)
Costa Rica Almost Bankrupt Because of Microsoft
the incidents in Costa Rica are Windows incidents
Gemini Links 29/03/2025: Art of Looking, Wireguard, EMacs
Links for the day
Links 29/03/2025: Attacks on Social Security and War Updates
Links for the day
Banned evidence: Ars Technica forums censored email predicting DebConf23 death, Abraham Raji & Debian cover-up
Reprinted with permission from Daniel Pocock
Over at Tux Machines...
GNU/Linux news for the past day
IRC Proceedings: Friday, March 28, 2025
IRC logs for Friday, March 28, 2025