News From the Help Desk

[sff_corgi_lj]

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Since I've been whinging about this for the past few days, I'd like to share an article one of my teammates pulled off CNN.com:

SoBig worm not yet slowing down Security firm: Worm not seeing normal drop-off; returning vacationers could bring new spike Monday. August 21, 2003: 12:31 PM EDT NEW YORK (CNN/Money) - Businesses and other computer users haven't yet seen the worst of the SoBig worm, according to a leading e-mail security firm. Mark Sunner, chief technology officer of MessageLabs, said that normally viruses, worms and other computer problems peak on the first day they hit as security software firms rush to get patches to their clients. But he said that instances of the SoBig worm, which has been cramming e-mail inboxes with spam, have not abated since it hit Tuesday. "We expect these to drop off on the second day, but we're not seeing that this time," Sunner said. "The e-mail component built into SoBig is so efficient that it has just reached that critical mass where it's got fertile ground to continue to grow." Sunner believes the virus will be brought under control but that it could continue to be a major problem until the middle or end of next week. "I would actually predict we'll see real spike on Monday," he said. "With so many people on vacation this week, this has sat in [e-mail] in trays waiting to strike, and these are the same users who won't have an up-to-date patch to address it." Sunner said that most of the problems caused by SoBig involve the time and cost of cleaning the worm from computer systems rather than the destruction of files or the opening of files to outsiders on the Internet, which can be problems with other worms and viruses. The SoBig worm is the latest in an outbreak that began 10 days ago with the so-called "Blaster" or "LovSan" worm which, by some estimates, infected more than 500,000 computers running the latest version of Microsoft Windows, the world's dominant operating system. A "worm" is another kind of program that infects computers. Viruses tend to be spread via e-mail, bogging down corporate e-mail systems in particular, but then also weighing down the Internet through the e-mail traffic that it carries. Worms travel through ordinary Internet connections searching for machines to infect. This week, the "Welchia" or "Nachi" worm surfaced. It masquerades as a benign program that attempts to fortify computers against infection from Blaster. But it packs a punch. It clogs computer networks, slowing Internet connections and even knocking systems offline. Nachia's victims include the European engineering firm ABB, Air Canada and the U.S. Navy and Marine Corps. CSX Transportation, one of the largest railroads in the eastern United States, saw its communications systems hit by a worm Wednesday. It affected dispatching and signal systems and caused both freight and passenger rail traffic to halt at different parts of the system, including the morning rush-hour for the Washington, D.C. commuter rail and the Amtrak inter-city passenger rail system. CSX did not specify which computer problem caused the problem. But generally there have been relatively few critical operating systems for businesses shut down so far by these spate of worms and viruses, so most of the cost has been a matter of cleaning up. It is too soon to estimate the cost to businesses from these programs. The Melissa virus in 1999 is estimated to have cost businesses $80 million. But the overall cost of spam, which the SoBig worm is adding to, is even greater -- Ferris Research estimates that spam will cost U.S. businesses more than $10 billion in 2003, and that at U.S.-based corporate organizations spam accounts for 15% to 20% of inbound e-mail. While SoBig's impact on spam may be short-lived, MessageLabs estimates that it could at least temporarily increase global e-mail traffic by as much as 60 percent.

So, see -- even if you're on a Mac or Linux box of some sort, you're still getting second-hand worm.

Comments

[katiemorris.livejournal.com]

Thanks for the update. I'm so lucky. On a nice new iMac at home and not had any problems, and at work, I just happen to be one of the very few people in the company still running windows '95. All around me computers were dropping like flies and I worked on blindly, not even noticing that I was the only one still going.

My upgrade to Windows 2000 had been ordered but due to the total ineptitude of our IT department (and we're and IT company - it figures) it is still four weeks overdue so I was saved.

I hate Microsoft and bloody Bill bloody Gates anyway. What was WRONG with Windows '95, that's what I want to know. Mine's still running. And my Mac is lovely and safe. Sorry for anyone that was hit though.

*big hugs all round*

[sff-corgi.livejournal.com]

Hear, hear.