| |
BAI Security - Virus/WORM Alert (Storm)
Untitled 1
In June BAI Security reported the possibility of a WORM that
was poised to hit the Internet in a widespread attack. Yesterday, July 26,
2007, a widespread attack has been unleashed again using a variant of the Storm
worm for the third time since our original announcement.
This time around 142 million emails have been spammed out containing URLs
leading to web pages infected with the malware.
The emails typically claim that an electronic card has been sent to the
recipient and that it can be viewed at the enclosed URL.
Inform your user base to avoid electronic greeting cards
from unknown users to avoid being a victim of this attack.
"It was just a matter of time before the hackers had enough websites hacked with
the proper malware loaded to support a widespread attack.", said Michael Bruck
of BAI Security. "We've been waiting for this one for over a month now and
we started seeing the attack on our Managed Security client sites via our event
correlation within our AntiVirus/Spyware/Malware and email content management
systems. Our systems provided early warning and since we block such
threats in real-time before they enter our clientele's network they were not
directly affected."
This is the second attack this month using the same variant of malware.
The first attack occurred from 2 July to 9 July. It generated about 123 million
messages, three times more than any attack in the past two years. But in the
earlier attack the malware was sent out in an attachment, whereas this is a web
only attack, which in many cases can fly below the radar of basic AntiVirus
systems.
In general the sites hosting the malware have been generated by the malware
writers, but a small number are hacked pages of legitimate companies.
Mr. Bruck is warning that companies need to take greater care of their own sites
to avoid being a host for malware. Many people simply don't realize the
significance of not protecting their sites and allowing them to be hacked for
hosting such malware. Once this happens and other organizations are
infected from malware on your site you are opening yourself to legal issues, as
well as major publicity problems that can ruin a businesses reputation.
"Of the millions of hacked sites out there it is estimated that 99% are small
and medium sized businesses or personal sites," he said. "With the cost of
our Managed Security Services within reach of even small firms that don't have
the in-house staff to deal with these issues, this type of this situation could
be avoided."
Many smaller organizations put their website up with static
information and simply do not update it in any way. This includes updates
for security patches and fixes to the underlying operating system. Even if
these organizations choose to not update their website content they still need
to pay attention to the security patches and administration for the server(s)
themselves to ensure they are not vulnerable to hackers that will use these
sites to mount attacks.
|
