Fear not the Windows zombies

There are many ways to "Suck at Information Security", but one easy way is to choose a platform that leads to entire military bases getting cracked.

Virus ‘sends RAF e-mails to Russia’

THE Ministry of Defence is investigating a major breach in security amid claims that all e-mail traffic from a number of RAF stations has been sent to a Russian internet server.

The e-mails were allegedly diverted to the Russian sender by a worm virus that entered the MoD systems 12 days ago bringing down computers and blocking e-mail communications across the military.

New Botnets Replace Vanquished Pests

Although the shutdown of a California Web hosting company eradicated several prominent botnets last year, others have stepped up to fill the gaps, a security researcher says.

Gone from the landscape, said Joe Stewart, director of research at Atlanta-based SecureWorks Inc., are "Srizbi" and "Storm," the botnets Stewart ranked as No. 1 and No. 5, respectively, in an April 2008 botnet census.

A variant of a malicious worm that targeted Microsoft Windows now is spreading via USB sticks, researchers say.

Security company BitDefender Labs, based in Bucharest, Romania, detected the Windows worm variant in late December. The original worm known as Win32.Worm.Downadup, first made its appearance in late November, exploiting a Microsoft vulnerability in the Windows RPC Server Service. Since then, it has rapidly spread across numerous corporate networks with the aim of distributing malicious software on susceptible computers.

Internet MSN users are warned. Some programme writers are now using IM to spread malicious programs such as viruses and worms. These viruses can spread when a person opens an infected file, such as pictures of pornographic nature, that is sent through IM by someone who appears to be a contact.

--Brian Valentine, Microsoft executive