Menagerie of worms& viruses secretly infects PC's

[BERIGAN]

Makes me mad, and a little scared using credit cards on the web!

http://www.iht.com/articles/108857.html

[Claude]

I work in the public administration of my country, where hundreds of computers had recently been infected by the Welchia worm (similar to Blaster). Most internal networks were unusable for a day. All workstations run Windows 2000 and Norton Antivirus, and the internet communication is filtered by a firewall, but somebody connecting his infected notebook to the network could have been responsible for spreading the virus amongst thousands of computers.

Contrary to previous worms which could only be activated by opening an email containing the virus or browsing a malicious website (both infections can be prevented by firewalls and Antivirus software), the Blaster and Welchia worms infect every Windows 2000 or XP PC logged into the internal network. I started my PC in the morning of that day and saw the Antivirus software reporting the infection, but it was too late. It could only be repaired with a special removal software and further infections prevented with the Microsoft patch.

The Windows bug that made those worm attacks possible had been known for a month and a patch was available, but the administration had not thought about installing it systematically. I usually care myself about my workstation, but I did not think a worm like this could spread as easily. Two of my friends also had their home PCs infected.

Fortunately, neither of these two worms had a function to destroy data, their objective was only to show Windows vulnerability. This would have been a disaster.

Edited September 5, 2003 by Claude

[Claude]

New worm tries to bring down Downing Street website