CRIME FW: [Information_technology] Daily News 1/27/04

From: George Heuston (GeorgeH@private)
Date: Tue Jan 27 2004 - 12:13:50 PST

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    From: information_technology-admin@private
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    Of InfraGard
    Sent: Tuesday, January 27, 2004 6:49 AM
    To: Information Technology
    Subject: [Information_technology] Daily News 1/27/04
    
    January 26, eWeek.com - Bagle-type threats on the rise? While the
    outbreak
    last week of the Bagle.A virus was one of the least troublesome in
    recent
    memory, security experts worry that the virus-following in the infamous
    footsteps of 2003's SoBig worms-is a harbinger of more-sophisticated
    attacks
    to come. Many in the security community say the SoBig family-and
    possibly
    Bagle.A-are the work of an organized group of criminals with bigger
    plans
    than merely clogging in-boxes and annoying IT staffs. SoBig.F and
    Bagle.A
    have the capability to log users' keystrokes, enabling the theft of
    passwords and other sensitive data, and are programmed to set up proxies
    on
    infected machines for the purpose of sending spam. For IT managers,
    these
    worms present new difficulties, given that they don't do any noticeable
    damage to infected machines but, rather, steal sensitive corporate
    passwords
    and other data. Administrators can also look for spikes in traffic on
    unusual ports or client machines sending large amounts of mail messages.
    "It's certainly interesting to see [Bagle.A] mirror the techniques in
    SoBig.
    It could be that virus writers are using Net users as beta testers
    before
    they build the very big ones," said Ian Hameroff, eTrust security
    strategist
    at Computer Associates International Inc. Source:
    http://www.eweek.com/article2/0,4149,1457323,00.asp
    
    January 26, Computerworld - Mydoom worm spreading rapidly. A new e-mail
    worm
    has appeared on the Internet and is spreading rapidly, according to
    leading
    anti-virus companies. The worm, called W32/Mydoom, surfaced late Monday,
    January 26. "This worm is taking off like a rocket, with well over
    20,000
    interceptions in just 2 hours of it being discovered," Ken Dunham of
    iDefense Inc. said. The virus is also being called MiMail.R, Shimg,
    Novarg
    and Mydoom, althought it's not certain yet that this code is a variant
    of
    the MiMail virus, Dunham said. Mydoom carries varying subjects such as
    "HELLO" or a blank subject, as well as a variety of messages and
    attachments. When loaded, it calls up Notepad and displays random
    characters, while creating a copy of itself and modifying the infected
    machine's Windows registry to run the code upon start-up. It may open a
    TCP
    port to listen for commands from a remote attacker, according to Dunham.
    "It
    also attacks sco.com with a DDoS [denial-of-service] attack," said a
    statement from F-Secure. It can spread by both e-mail and the Kazaa
    file-sharing system, several anti-virus vendors said. Computer
    Associates
    International Inc.'s research labs received 11 copies of the new worm
    almost
    simultaneously today, indicating a rapidly spreading infection. The
    Mercury
    News reports that Vincent Gullotto of McAfee AVERT said the company had
    received reports from some companies receiving MyDoom e-mails at rates
    as
    great as 1,000 a minute. He added at as many as six Fortune 500
    companies
    have been affected. Source:
    http://www.computerworld.com/securitytopics/security/virus/story/0,10801
    ,89449,00.html
    
    
    Internet Alert Dashboard
    Current Alert Levels
    AlertCon: 2 out of 4
    https://gtoc.iss.net
    
    Security Focus
    ThreatCon: 2 out of 4
    http://analyzer.securityfocus.com/
    Current Virus and Port Attacks
    Virus: #1 Virus in the United States: JAVA_BYTEVER.A
    Source: http://wtc.trendmicro.com/wtc/wmap.html, Trend World Micro Virus
    Tracking Center
    [Infected Computers, North America, Past 24 hours, #1 in United States]
    
    Top 10 Target Ports 135 (epmap), 1434 (ms?sql?m), 137 (netbios?ns), 6129
    (dameware), 445 (microsoft?ds), 27374 (SubSeven), 901(realsecure), 17300
    (Kuang2TheVirus), 1433 (ms?sql?s), 80 (www)
    Source: http://isc.incidents.org/top10.html; Internet Storm Center
    
    
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