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"Witty" Worm Wrecks Computers

Posted by timothy on from the your-ruse-your-clever-trick dept.

An anonymous reader writes "A new Internet worm wriggled across the entire Internet in the span of a few hours Saturday morning to all computers running several recent versions of firewall software from Internet Security Systems, including BlackICE and RealSecure, according to this story at Washingtonpost.com. The flaw that Witty exploited was discovered Wednesday by eEye Digital Security. The worm overwrites data on the first few sectors of the victim's hard drive, making the machine virtually ubootable and potentially destroying much - if not all - of the victim's data." Update: 03/21 02:18 GMT by T : Reader Jeff Horning points out that eEye actually disovered the worm on the 8th of March, and came up with a fix the next day.

3 of 587 comments (clear)

  1. Imprecise! by Knights+who+say+'INT · · Score: 1, Flamebait

    "All computers", you sure?

    Don'tcha mean "Windows computers"?

    Me and my Quantian box are browsing safely and recklessly.

    On a less triumphant note, I'll eventually get called to fix Windows machines that suffer from that worm. How can you recover someone's data from an unbootable HD?

  2. Sucks to be a Windows user by HangingChad · · Score: 0, Flamebait
    The worm may attack firewalls, but it's still a Windows problem. I hate to sound unsympathetic (which is usually a clue someone is about to sound that way) but how many times do people have to get virus-smacked before they wise up and move off Windows? There are some really simple Linux distros out there.

    It was a great feeling the other day when the wife was checking Email on her Linux workstation and asked me about a funny attachment she got from one of her girlfriends.

    As shitty as MSFT has acted, it's not a bit sad to watch them slide.

    --
    That's our life, the big wheel of shit. - The Fat Man, Blue Tango Salvage
    1. Re:Sucks to be a Windows user by neko9 · · Score: 0, Flamebait

      Eventually, if everyone moves to linux, we will have the same problems as windows users wrt worms and viruses.

      wrong. that's why.

      A lot of programs/routines in linux will have to be refined if there is any chance of linux become a usable desktop operating system.

      in that sentence word "linux" should be changed to "windows". and that's why.