July 2005 - Posts
I will be on vacation for about a week and a half on the beautiful Olympic Peninsula. Ergo, posting will be limited unless there is a notable virus outbreak.
Hope everyone out there is having a wonderful summer!
Although we have not seen many outbreaks today, antivirus vendor Trend Micro still reports a 22 percent increase in infections since last quarter:
During the second quarter (April-June) of this year, more than 10 million virus infections have happened worldwide, according to Trend Micro, a leading anti virus and internet content security software services provider.
Trend Micro's World Tracking Centre recorded 10,248,989 infections worldwide during the April-June quarter of this year.
This number is huge hike (22 per cent) from last quarters 8,279,477, a company statement said.
The full article, published in the Hindu, is here. No statistics were provided on whether Trend Micro had substantially increased the number of computers which they cover, which could account for the spike in reported infections.
I thought I had read it all, but ZNET reports that some Romanians welcome the “socially useful” Antiman.A worm, which certainly brings an entirely new facet to the “good worm“ debate:
Romanian security firm BitDefender has revealed that after releasing signatures to protect its customers from a virus that deleted files from their computers containing gypsy music, it was inundated with letters of complaint from customers who wanted the virus to spread.
The virus, dubbed Antiman.A, was discovered at the end of April and duped users into executing its payload by pretending to contain news about three Romanian journalists that had been kidnapped. When run, the virus searched the victim's computer for files containing the names of Romanian gypsy music singers.
The last paragraph is truly priceless:
Last word went to a BitDefender customer that offered to keep the antivirus labs staff busy to try give the virus more time to spread: "I would have gotten all of you drunk just to make sure you didn't get the [detection] tool out… god bless the guy who created this virus."
The full article is here.
Microsoft has released three critical updates, one affecting Microsoft Word 2000 and 2002 and Microsoft Works Suite, and the others affecting Windows. In addition, a Moderate security bulletin affecting the Microsoft Telnet client has been re-released. Everyone running affected software should update as soon as possible.
Links
Click Here - All Bulletins
Click Here - Vulnerability in Microsoft Word Could Allow Remote Code Execution (MS05-035)
Click Here - Vulnerability in Microsoft Color Management Module Could Allow Remote Code Execution (MS05-036)
Click Here - Vulnerability in JView Profiler Could Allow Remote Code Execution (MS05-037)
Click Here - Moderate re-release: Vulnerability in Telnet Client Could Allow Information Disclosure (MS05-033)
Microsoft reported yesterday that a bug in Internet Explorer may allow a malicious or malformed COM object (Javaprxy.dll) to terminate the program. From the notice:
Microsoft is investigating a new public report of a vulnerability affecting Internet Explorer. We have not been made aware of any attacks attempting to use the reported vulnerability or customer impact at this time, but we are aggressively investigating the public report.
At the completion of this investigation, Microsoft will take the appropriate action to help protect our customers, which may include providing additional mitigation guidance through this Security Advisory, and if appropriate, a security update through our monthly release process or an out-of-cycle security update, depending on the results of the investigation and customer needs.
To help protect your system from this issue Microsoft encourages users to exercise caution when opening links in e-mail. For more information about Safe Browsing, visit the Trustworthy Computing Web site.
We continue to encourage customers to follow our Protect Your PC guidance of enabling a firewall, applying software updates and installing antivirus software. Customers can learn more about these steps at the Protect Your PC Web site.
Customers who believe they may have been affected by this issue can contact Product Support Services. You can contact Product Support Services in North America at no charge using the PC Safety line (1866-PCSAFETY). International customers can contact Product Support Services by using one of the available methods found at the Microsoft Security Help and Support for Home Users Web site.
The full notice, as well as a Frequently Asked Questions section, workarounds, and more, has been published here. It is important to note that so far, no reported incidents of this bug being made use of in a malicious way have surfaced.