SoBig virus update

www.washingtonpost.com...

"LONDON/SAN FRANCISCO (Reuters) - A new computer virus, feared to be the most potent ever, expanded its reach around the globe on Thursday, sending e-mail networks crashing and frazzling technicians already overstretched by a plague of computer bugs."


This one is indeed nasty. Rumors from some IT friends indicate this may indeed be the first real worm threat authored by malicious person(s).

We're not seeing this information in the news yet, but among the trojan features that a version of this bugger leaves behind is a nasty DOS engine that ping floods URL's in the users browser history record. This is particularly damaging because it attempts to overwhelm actual full-URL's of deep-content, rather than simply IP's or home pages. The damage occurs to dynamic sites like this one, where each page is composed at "browse time" by a combination of templates, programming, and database queries. Hundreds of repeated requests to such pages can quickly overwhelm even the most robust website technology systems... and it's difficult to stop since the inbound activity "looks" like normal traffic.

It's important to make sure your e-mail virus checking is functioning properly, if you're using Outlook or Outlook Express make sure you've installed all updates, and you never open any attachment that arrives unexpected.

Our ATS server's e-mail virus checking is stopping this bugger before it gets to you (some did get through earlier), so if you have an ATS e-mail account, you're safe for now.

more updates as I have them

This is why you can never have too much security on your computer. Dont open attachments if you dont know who they are from. NEVER!

Well I dunno if that worm causes it, but yesterday afternoon my laptop's firewall had blocked 200 intrusions since it was installed.
Later that afternoon that number increased to 1600 in a matter of minutes.
I think it has something to do with kazaa, the "attacks" were aimed at port 1241.

JUst heard on the UK news that the Virus might slow down the internet to a crawl
Virus may increase global e- mail traffic to 60%

Well then....why is it hitting Yahoo mail? Because my inbox is flooded with those messages...and there is noway to stop them...I mean I can't wait for Sept. 10th because that is when it ends....no more emails!

Here is more info on what it does....
securityresponse.symantec.com...@mm.html

But has anyone noticed that like every week there is a new worm out there?

"SoBig's Massive Internet Attack Averted"

Virus experts had identified within Sobig's code the Internet protocol (IP) addresses of 20 Windows PCs that were scheduled to send an invasive program to computers infected with what has been described as one of the most virulent e-mail viruses ever. Experts were unable to determine the purpose of the program.

www.techweb.com...

The article also says SoBig.F has infected as many as a million maches globally, with over 100 million emails total sent.

Even after all the warnings about viruses, a million people opened the attachment containing SoBig.F, which has clogged servers and could've done who knows what with the Trojan it was supposed to download today.
Can someone tattoo the following on all the infected users' right hand?

Get an antivirus program
www.symantec.com...
www.mcafee.com...
www.free-av.com...
www.pandasoftware.com...
Get a firewall
www.symantec.com...
www.zonelabs.com...
smb.sygate.com...
And don't open attachments in emails unless you know you're supposed to be getting it.



-B.