RSSBuggy Code Halts Spread of Zotob
By Ed Oswald | Published August 19, 2005, 12:23 PM
In the end, the much-feared Zotob worm became more of a localized nuisance than a widespread problem due to the design of the code itself. Mistakes by the coders of the worm in variants caused infected machines to reboot continuously, not giving most machines enough time to spread the worm to other vulnerable PCs.
The flaws gave IT personnel time to fight Zotob with patches provided by Microsoft, helping to prevent its spread. Thus, the overall damage caused by the worm was minimal.
However, even with the flaws in Zotob code, it managed to hit several prominent media outlets. The worm affected the Associated Press, The New York Times, ABC, and CNN - even causing CNN to break into regular news coverage to show newsroom computers rebooting continuously.
Although Zotob itself does not have a destructive payload, it includes backdoor capabilities, which connect the infected computer to an Internet Relay Chat channel to await remote instructions from a malicious user.
The critical vulnerability in Windows 2000 that opens the door for Zotob was actually patched by Microsoft last week, but system administrators claim they did not have enough time to roll out the update.
Microsoft last Friday chided security researchers for breaching "the commonly accepted industry practice of withholding vulnerability data so close to update release and have published exploit code."
Hehehe... kind of ironic.
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|These aren't true viruses, they should be called worms. Back in the old days viruses would delete stuff and break things these things just slow down your system and spread around......
I guess the sure fire way of protecting oneself if htey have servers is drop Microsloth and have Linux installed it would save a lot of problems with viruses in that respect but oh well guess someone will just exploit 0day on IE and create a huge ruckus
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|Yes, because Linux is virus-proof!!
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|That was sarcasm, btw.
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|*sarcastic voice*
...no way
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|Hehehe...
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|"...even causing CNN to break into regular news coverage to show newsroom computers rebooting continuously." man-must have been a reeeeal slow news day-maybe this coder should have watched 'office space' for research-or interned with microsoul!
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|He/She's still getting the attention. And now he/she's got input on how to make the worm 'better'. Great....
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|Haven't these virus writing morons got something better to do?
What a useless band of retards.
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|Ha, a buggy virus! How long before the virus author issues a patch?
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|haha, well the author received the media attention he wanted!
"Zotob author, not only has problems spelling, but it turns out he was accept for Script Kiddie of the year award, Microsoft will present him with his award once he's narc'd out by one of his pimple face peers!"
First and most importantly I'd like to say congratulations on your accomplishments! I mean constantly rebooting a PC automatically! You my friend are the future!
God Bless
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|Windows update certainly does a great job at rebooting computers too.
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|You're right. A lot of people probably wouldn't have even noticed. You have to reboot Microsoft with practically anything you do, anyway!
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|Now the zotob writer knows what they did wrong. They`ll get it right next time!!
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|LoL. Worthless worm.
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|hmmm... you'd think the zotob writer would have learned from Sasser's mistake. Oh well. I'm certainly not complaining.
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