Slashdot Mirror

← Back to Stories (view on slashdot.org)

Targeted Worm Hits Kazaa's Network

Posted by timothy on from the worms-churn-the-earth dept.

sh0rtie writes: "Kaspersky Labs and the BBC are reporting that the Fasttrack network that Kazaa uses has been hit by its first targeted worm virus dubbed 'Benjamin.' Is this a clever RIAA creation or that of a mischievous virus writer? I guess we will never know, but the result is that it seems to be bringing unsuspecting users machines to a crawl with full hard drives and clogging up the Fasttrack network with massive amounts of traffic bringing more headaches for ISPs and sysadmins worldwide."

2 of 300 comments (clear)

  1. Stupid Virus Writer? by Saeculorum · · Score: 5, Insightful

    From the article...

    In addition to eating up free disk space Benjamin takes additional actions: under the name of the infected computer's owner it opens an anonymous web site from which it displays advertising banners. This way Benjamin's creator profits by the resulting increase in advertising displays.

    I might be wrong, but I'd think it'd be quite easy to find where the money from the advertising banners is going to. Quite simple to find the virus writer.

    Of course, the recipient of the advertising revenue may not be the virus writer, but it's a good place to start.

    Stupid people amuse me.

  2. Hard to tell the worm from the software by BCoates · · Score: 5, Insightful

    Hmm, uses your drive space and bandwidth, pops up ads, modifies your system configuration without your permission...

    Looks to me like the only difference between this trojan and the programs it comes in is that one has a EULA.

    Time for virus writers to wise up and disclaim liability with an incomprehensible clickthrough like all the other writers of malicious code...

    --
    Benjamin Coates