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12th August 2003

THE BLASTER / LOVSAN WORM

Brian Grainger


 

Only a week ago the Blog reported on a critical flaw in Windows which allowed a hacker to execute any command on your PC, just by finding you connected to the Internet.

Symantec and others have now reported that the flaw has been used to target a worm at unsuspecting users. The so called W32.Blaster.Worm or Lovsan Worm may cause your machine to hang, but its main purpose is to distribute itself and to create a Denial of Service attack on the windowsupdate.com domain at any time from August 16th. It does all this by sending and running the file Msblast.exe on an attacked PC.

Hidden in the worm is the following text, which is never displayed:

I want to say LOVE YOU SAN!!
Billy gates why do you make this possible ? Stop making money and fix your software!!

You can find more details, including how to remove the worm at:
http://securityresponse.symantec.com/avcenter/venc/data/pf/w32.blaster.worm.html

The Windows flaw affects anybody with any version of Windows EXCEPT Window 98 or Windows Millennium. Whereas for most other vulnerabilities of this type a user has to open an e-mail or visit a web site to be hacked this one only needs the user to be connected to the Internet! That means all of us. You can find more about the vulnerability as well as a patch by following this link:
http://microsoft.com/technet/treeview/default.asp?url=/technet/security/bulletin/MS03-026.asp


 

 

 

 


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