Slashdot Mirror
New IM Worm On The Loose
elfarto writes "Techweb is
reporting that a new worm that spreads via Microsoft's instant messaging client
began badgering users Monday, several security firms said.
Dubbed Funner, the worm propagates by sending itself to all the contacts listed
in the user's copy of MSN Messenger, Microsoft's IM client.
There is an analysis on
Symantec Security Response Site; apparently the worm tries to download stuff
from www.78p.com and adds entries to the hosts
file pointing to more that 400 Chinese porn sites. The worm also sends itself to
the whole contact list as funny.exe so it requires the user interaction to
actually execute it. "
How is this a bad thing?
Time to cash in!
Guess my workday tomorrow has been planned out in advance. (I have dumb users.)
"..and adds entries to the hosts file pointing to more that 400 Chinese porn sites"
First good reason i hear to switch to Windows.
host www.78p.com
www.78p.com has address 1.10.5.89
Lawyers, MBA's, RIAA? A jedi fears not these things!
Wow. We've gone from viruses pretending to be porn in order to do funny things to your computer to viruses pretending to be something funny that give you porn.
Is this why MSN messenger seems to have been down for about 12 of the last 24 hours?
No, that's normal.
And they don't run as Admin anyway, so the worm couldn't even infect them if they did click it...
And Microsoft will surely release a prompt fix to address this issue...
So I don't see what the problem is here. :-)
Ohhhh... I see the plan... we slashdot 78p.com, thus limiting the 'worm's damage!
Good thinking, guys!
Just doing my part. ;)
It should be 'more fun', not 'funner'.
------------------
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No, worm.exe won't spread nearly as fast as virus.exe...
Oh well, what the hell...
Is the worm author most benovelant guy or what ?
China rewards porn snitches
1)run windows 2)get infected 3)receive list and fwd to the chineese authority 4)profit!!
Python script to convert photos into "artsy" portraits: http://p2pbridge.sf.net/pyPortrait/
In my experience the main cause of applications failing to run as non-admin user is copy protection on games.
Frequently, these start up a service when they run. It would be very hard to make these work as non-admin.
Personally, the first thing I do when I find a game like this is download a no-cd patch/crack. Then I can run it unprivileged.
There are exceptions; the last icq client I tried won't even run as 'power user' and must be run as administrator.
The developers of this sort of rubbish need electric shocks applied to their genitalia every time someone gets infected through their crap application.
In the free world the media isn't government run; the government is media run.
"pointing to more that 400 Chinese porn sites"
How do they know that all 400 are porn sites? Did someone actually sit down and visit every one?
Also, are they hiring?
But i would NEVER open something they sent me called funny.exe. I know about their senses of humor.
All Troll + "offtopic" mods are meta moderated as "Unfair", because you abused the system.
A worm that spreads via IM? Or a worm that spreads via stupid dumb-ass users who don't know better than to run a .exe they weren't expecting to receive?
One day, with a bit of luck, people opening attachments/files/emails/whatever like this will be considered much the same as people eating strange pieces of food that they find in the street.
For those in the support side of the field, remember that as long as there are stupid people (and there always will be) security vulnerabilities will always be a poor second cousin to humans. The bulk of your support calls won't come from clever little worms that capitalise on obscure security flaws in a product, they'll come as a result of idiots thinking that "nakedwoman.exe" is actually something they want to see.
Yet another reason we should embed cattle-prods into keyboards... "wow, some stranger sent me some naughty pictures of herself! Pity they're archived, I'll just double-click and let them extract themsel *zaaaaaaaap!!!*"
Everything except a virus checker...
*sigh*
and you forgot poland, as well.
Why switch to GAIM? If you were using the regular MSN client, you'd be up quite a bunch of money - 400+ chinese porn sites times $240
"They that can give up essential liberty to obtain a little temporary safety deserve neither liberty nor safety."