Slashdot Mirror
Net Worm Uses Google to Spread
troop23 writes "A web worm that identifies potential victims by searching Google is spreading among online bulletin boards using a vulnerable version of the program phpBB, security professionals said on Tuesday. Almost 40,000 sites may have already been infected. In an odd twist if you use Microsoft's Search engine to scan for the phrase 'NeverEverNoSanity'-- part of the defacement text that the Santy worm uses to replace files on infected Web sites--returns nearly 39,000 hits." Reader pmf sent in a few more information links: F-Secure weblog and Bugtraq posting. Update: 12/22 03:34 GMT by T : ZephyrXero links to this news.com article that says Google is now squashing requests generated by the worm.
Someone figure out a way to blame this on Microsoft!
I think this virus/worm hit /., when I clicked on the link to this article, all I saw was: "Nothing for you to see here. Please move along."
You can't handle the truth.
it can always use Google Suggest to find victims. :)
Microsoft search beats Google at indexing pages hacked by this virus! MS Search turns up 39000 pages, google turns up zero on the same nonsense keyword!
SJW: a person who perceives an injustice, and while correcting it, commits a greater injustice.
When it infects sites running SlashCode, it pretends to be a legitament post (so it can get the defacement tag "NeverEverNoSanity" on the front page, then monitors for posting, and tries to get first post, too.
Google takes a while to get information into the index usually a couple weeks(this doesn't apply to news sites or other sites google deems to be updated constantly), MSN beta search usually lags about a day after a crawl. I won't even talk about how slow yahoo is(After first crawl and index).
Have you ever been to a turkish prison?
Good job. You do know that by Slashdotting the phpBB.com server, you're preventing people from patching, right? :)
You can never go home again... but I guess you can shop there.
I had forgotten the MSN beta search engine, so I just googled it...
There is another kind of evil which we must fear most, and that is the indifference of good men. -- Boondock Saints
So I get my present, in the mail, a little early.
A new HDTV card...
I go to download the linux only drivers and...
NeverEverNoSanity!!!
Argh! &$@*#! Humbug.
OMG! How is parent funny?!? Is this some bizzare experiment by slashdot mods?
"Once Santa infects a Web site, he searches Google for other sites running phpBB and then attempts to infect those sites as well."
The worm didn't touch a single file not owned by user 'www' - just the few thousand files that were.
Dewey, what part of this looks like authorities should be involved?