Worm vs. Worm Battle Slows Networks

joel_archer writes "According this article at the DrudgeReport, a worm, apparently designed to patch MSBlaster infected Win2K and XP machines, brings various Canadian networks to a crawl. Hardest hit was the 411 system, Air Canada, and Ontario hydro electric operations. Apparently this is causing more problems than MSBlaster itself."

Comments

hmm, i wonder.

[Pandora's Vox]

MS exploit virus comes out.

mysterious patching virus starts making the rounds. massive consequences.

we should be doing this more often, kids.

-Leigh

Re: hmm, i wonder.

[Black Parrot]

> MS exploit virus comes out. mysterious patching virus starts making the rounds. massive consequences. we should be doing this more often, kids.

Yeah, I'm working on a worm to kill off the worm that was supposed to fix Blaster, but I've been busy and haven't gotten it out yet. Look for it in your mailboxes tomorrow!

Re: hmm, i wonder.

[gfody]

I'd better get started on my worm to kill your worm! er shit, semantec already has a definition file for anti.anti.anti.blaster.win32?!

Re:hmm, i wonder.

[Mr. Bad Example]

MS exploit virus comes out.
mysterious patching virus starts making the rounds. massive consequences.
we should be doing this more often, kids.

That's the worst haiku I've ever seen.

Re: How lame is their IT department?

[Black Parrot]

"The system is under attack from the virus, and we've had more problems with this particular virus this afternoon than any other previous virus in Ontario," said Terry Young, a spokesman for the Ontario's Independent Electricity Market Operator.

> So basically they haven't yet learned how to block port 135 on their networks? And they refer to a worm as a virus. I'm glad I don't live in Ontario right about now.

One suspects that the power companies in that corner of the world are oh-so-glad to have any random excuse right now.

Worm vs. Worm - It's a Ripoff!

[teamhasnoi]

I got this on pay-per-view last week and it was totally fixed. MS Blaster dove off the top rope onto MS Patcher, and then kept booting him, and rebooting him. MS Patcher was like, "Huh? What?" until his manager got in the ring and slapped him.

You couldn't tell, but I used the freeze-frame on my Beowulf cluster of Tivos and saw that there was hidden IP in Blasters hand.

I was so pissed, I called Fight Update to complain, but the lines were all busy.

Never again will I pay $179 for a pay-per-view wrestling match...although the upcoming free-for-all cage match between SCO, Linux, IBM, Novell, Red Hat and FSF sounds pretty interesting. I bet that PanIP will make an appearance and beat the hell out of somebody too.

Someone always gets in the cage at the last minute.

Windows servers

[danielsfca2]

At Boston/Logan airport last Friday, I saw on a Delta departures/arrivals screen this Windows error dialog in front of the grid of flights:

"At least one service failed to start..."

I took a photo of it. I thought:

- "I'm glad I don't run Windows." - "I'm glad I'm not flying Delta today."

Re:Windows servers

[CurlyG]

Holy shit, your gas station is running Windows and is connected to the internet??

Please, please tell me that the pumps can't actually be controlled from the PC running the station...

Re:Windows servers

[Anonymous Coward]

Ummm... there's this thing called a handle... it controls the 'gas' coming out of the nozzle... ummmm... it's like, a handle. You know?

Re:Windows servers

[Spoing]

Windows is fine for games and light use, but who why would you want to do anything serious with it? Sooner or later, these companies will wise up and move to *nix.

[comic book guy voice] You would think that, but no, no they won't. [puts hands to face and continues to cry]

On a dead serious note, I have personally wasted 2 hours yesterday on this new strain of the worm (it took down a customer's network that one sub-project needs -- they are SOL). Add 10 hours for the original one and it's a big block of my time over the past week...so much so, that my contract has been extended at this site to deal with the backlog multiple departments are suffering with.

Here's the kicker; all *my* computers run Linux...yet, the network uses Windows, so the Linux systems become marginally useful even though they pur along fine by themselves.

Even though I'm not in the IS department on this project, I do get drafted because I know something...and the IS folks are not the cream of the crop here. Some are good, though they all do too much of the 'stand of one leg...no, server is still sick...stand on other leg...nope, is it time? OK, hit the lights and get the chicken while I light the candles.'.

You can bet that I've been pointing out that I have not had a single virus on my machines, though honestly that is a small value since most of what I do requires the damn network!

Re:Windows servers

[Mr. Bad Example]

Holy shit, your gas station is running Windows and is connected to the internet??

"Regular, midgrade, premium...CowboyNeal? The hell?"

Is anyone else getting the mental image

[mcc]

...of two huge monsters battling over Tokyo and knocking over buildings in their fight while the puny sysadmins in their tanks futilely try to hurl patches, and one of the huge monsters is Good and one of the huge monsters is Bad but no matter becuase even if the good one wins, Tokyo is getting stomped flat either way?

Okay, I think I've just proven that I've been awake too long. Goodnight..

Windows on airport displays

[Anarchofascist]

My wife and I were going through Dublin airport when I noticed that a number of the airport schedule display screens were going through a reboot sequence. I showed it to her : "Hey, looks like that one crashed."

She had to point out that a more alarming interpretation of the word "crashed" may have been made by some of the other people in the arrivals area.