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The Origin Of Sobig (And Its Next Phase)

Posted by timothy on from the 5-percent-is-plenty dept.

MrZeebo writes "According to this story at Canada.com, the FBI, along with other authorities, have traced the origin of the Sobig worm. The quick timeline: Apparently, an earlier version of the worm installed a backdoor on a home computer in British Columbia. The creator of the worm used this compromised computer to create a Usenet account with Easynews.com in Phoenix, using a stolen credit card. The worm spread from Usenet, and contained the IP addresses of 20 computers to contact on Friday, and to download an unknown program from those computers. Officials were able to take 19 of these computers offline before the mass-download. However, the 20th computer stayed online, and many copies of the worm were able to get the rogue program. Those that did were merely redirected to a porn site, no damage done. However, now infected computers will continue to try and connect to the other 19 every Friday and Sunday until the worm expires on Sept. 10th." Reader muldoonaz points out this brief Reuters story about the investigation, too.

6 of 500 comments (clear)

  1. Linux by brokencomputer · · Score: 0, Offtopic

    Now if the computers hadn't been running windows and they would have crashed anyway and wouldnt have been able to execute it. Oh wait they were running windows. I guess windows(and any crashable OS) only crashes during important data writing.

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    The Television Wiki
  2. Movie by msgmonkey · · Score: 0, Offtopic

    The whole summary sounds like some Matricesque (sp?) movie with little plot twists thrown in there for good measure.

  3. Re:Viruses - fucktard by mutende · · Score: 0, Offtopic

    Ah, refreshing! :-)

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    Unselfish actions pay back better
  4. Re:DON'T PUSH IT FUCKER!!! by dipipanone · · Score: 0, Offtopic

    Heh. I love this. I can just imagine it. Two acne'd basement dwellers are waiting for an interview at the sign of the Golden Arches...

    AC1: Of course, this isn't my real job. I'm just waiting for a gig as a sys admin to come along.
    AC2: Hmm. I don't suppose you read Slashdot, do you?
    AC1: Why yes, from time to time.
    AC2: What account name do you post under?
    AC2: Oh, I don't bother logging in...
    AC1: Aieeeee! Die, motherfucker...

  5. On Ham radio vs the Internet by Gherald · · Score: 0, Offtopic

    If Internet did not exist, or if I lived in a country w/o internet, then I would have a ham license.

    But as it stands, isn't ham radio kind of pointless?

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    The unofficial /. digest
  6. A question comes to mind by kjj · · Score: 0, Offtopic

    "Why does a mosquito bite your ear? And who cares. The answer is simple, call an exterminator."

    In other words delete the damned thing and be done with it.