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Jacqui Cheng from Arstechnica reports that the latest strains of malware have been released under several guises which are sent to people in email. They’ve used subject lines for innocuous sounding things like weather news, ecards, or reports that Saddam Hussein is still alive, or that Fidel Castro is dead, sexy women, YouTube, and even blogs. Some unknown group seems to be creating the largest botnet to date.
The spread of the “storm worm” started via e-mails purporting to provide information on some dangerous storms in Europe in January. Users who fell for it were directed to a web site containing malicious code aimed at turning their Windows PCs into spam bots. Symantec security response director Dave Cole told InformationWeek in late January that the worm had accounted for 8 percent of global virus infections after a single weekend rampage.
Last month security firm F-secure noted that greeting-card spam e-mails directed users to a web site that made you download “ecard.exe” Next spams had a link pointing to a site that claimed the user needed to install “Microsoft Data Access” in order to view the card which was even more deceptive. Naturally, this download installed a trojan on the user’s computer for the purposes of relaying spam.
The worm perpetrators have now switched focus to blogs. The worm is actually getting into Blogspot accounts and creating new blog posts with links to the trojan.Security software firm Sunbelt Software speculates that the posts are being made through Blogspot’s mail-to feature, the worm combs the user’s local contact list and send itself out to everyone on the list, including Blogspot.
Heise Security estimates that, as of early August, 1.7 million computers were infected worldwide as part of a massive botnet, and that number has surely escalated since then. Heise warns that this size could prove a very dangerous threat. Estimates from some security firms are reaching as high as 10 million. The FBI warned that it had discovered more than a million PCs in a botnet. Read More :
Xbox 360 Messenger Kit
A collection of new peripherals labeled “Limited Edition” were designed byTodd MacFarlane. The Covenant Brute and the Master Chief wireless controllers, will be available. There will be a spartan green headset. The Xbox 360 Messenger Kit, includes a chatpad and a 360 headset, it enables Live users to commune with other Live friends, or contacts on Windows-based PCs.
Sony Stinkin’ It Up Again
In 2005, the company put rootkit software on its music CDs, which infected millions of customer’s PCs with spyware type software that was nearly invisible. There were many court cases which resulted in Sony having to pay fines. Taking shortcuts with software design has resulted in controversey and a loss of customer trust once again. The installation of hidden software on PC’s is similar to Sony BMG’s attempt two years ago to ‘protect’ music copyrights by installing rootkit software.
In the “security” software for a biometric USB key the issue becomes a tinge sinister, since the MicroVault USB, storage device, has cloaked driver software beneath the Windows directory. What makes that risky is that a cracker could use it to exploit the system. The rootkit would avoid detection from security applications. The fingerprint-recognition software packaged with Sony’s Microvault USB installs itself as hidden files on the user’s system under the “c:\windows\” directory.
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