-------- Original Message -------- Subject: post.com on new hacking tool Date: Wed, 17 Mar 2004 12:44:03 -0500 From: Robert MacMillan <robert.macmillan@private> Organization: washingtonpost.com To: declan@private Declan - thought this might interest the politechies... http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A444-2004Mar17.html Hackers Embrace P2P Concept Experts Fear 'PhatBot' Trojan Could Lead to New Wave of Spam or Denial-of-Service Attacks By Brian Krebs washingtonpost.com Staff Writer Wednesday, March 17, 2004; 6:23 AM Computer security experts in the private sector and U.S. government are monitoring the emergence of a new, highly sophisticated hacker tool that uses the same peer-to-peer (P2P) networking abilities that power controversial file-sharing networks like Kazaa and BearShare. By some estimates, hundreds of thousands of computers running Microsoft's Windows operating system have already been infected worldwide. The tool, a program that security researchers have dubbed "Phatbot," allows its authors to gain control over computers and link them into P2P networks that can be used to send large amounts of spam e-mail messages or to flood Web sites with data in an attempt to knock them offline. The new hacker threat caught the attention of cyber-security officials at the U.S. Department of Homeland Security, prompting the agency to send an alert last week to a select group of computer security experts. In the alert, the agency warned that Phatbot snoops for passwords on infected computers and tries to disable firewall and antivirus software. A copy of the DHS alert was made available to washingtonpost.com by two sources at different companies who asked that their identities not be used because they did not want to risk losing access to future government alerts. Officials at the department and US-CERT -- a government-funded cyber-security monitoring agency -- confirmed that the message was genuine. Phatbot is "a virtual Swiss Army knife of attack software," said Vincent Weafer, senior director of security response at Cupertino, Calif.-based Symantec Corp. [etc...] _______________________________________________ Politech mailing list Archived at http://www.politechbot.com/ Moderated by Declan McCullagh (http://www.mccullagh.org/)
This archive was generated by hypermail 2b30 : Thu Mar 18 2004 - 00:24:53 PST