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Security analysts are warning IT managers and users about an email hoax that is playing off
people’s concerns about the Blaster worm.
A new backdoor Trojan, named the Graybird-A, is being disguised as a patch for the Microsoft
Windows vulnerability that the Blaster worm has been exploiting for the past week. The bogus
patch is coming attached to an email.
Microsoft has issued a statement warning users that the company never delivers software
directly via email. Patches can be downloaded from the official Microsoft Web site or from
CD-Roms or floppy disks.
”Packaging Graybird as a Microsoft patch is a very devious trick,” says Chris Belthoff, a
senior security analyst at Sophos, Inc., an anti-virus and security company. ”Blaster is
believed to have infected hundreds of thousands of computers around the world, and this is a
deliberate attempt to exploit users’ panic. Never trust unsolicited executable code that
arrives via email. Businesses should consider blocking all executable code at the email
gateway so it cannot reach their users.”
Users will be getting its Windows patches from a different Microsoft Web address than usual.
Because of the Blaster worm, Microsoft also has killed off its windowsupdate.com Web site.
The Blaster worm was launching a distributed denial-of-service attack (DDoS) through
infected computers against the windowsupdate.com Web site starting on Saturday, Aug. 16.
Instead of suffering through the attack or trying to ward it off, Microsoft simply shut down
the address.
Users can access Windows patches via the www.Microsoft.com site or the new
http://windowsupdate.microsoft.com site.
”Users should not think this step means they no longer have to do anything about the
Blaster worm,” says Graham Cluley, senior technology consultant for Sophos. ”All computer
users still have a responsibility to ensure this worm has no hiding place on their PCs. So,
install the patch from Microsoft, ensure your firewall is properly configured, and confirm
your anti-virus is up-to-date.”
The Blaster worm was first detected on Aug. 11. It quickly spread from machine to machine
across the globe through a flaw in the Windows operating system. But the worm doesn’t carry
a destructive payload, only causing a small percentage of infected computers to reboot
because of a flaw in its own coding.
Instead, Blaster, otherwise known as LovSan and Poza, is specifically aimed at causing
trouble for Microsoft. The worm is geared to harvest as many vulnerable systems as possible
and launch a DDoS attack on the windowsupdate.com Web site. By focusing all the net
congestion on that Web site, the author of the worm was deliberately trying to make it
difficult for IT managers and individual users to download the patch they need to secure
their systems against the worm.
Blaster exploits a flaw in the Remote Procedure Call (RPC) process, which controls
activities such as file sharing. The flaw enables the attacker to gain full access to the
system. The vulnerability itself, which affects Windows NT, Windows 2000, Windows 2003 and
Windows XP machines, affects both servers and desktops, expanding the reach of any exploit
that takes advantage of it.
Where the vulnerability affects servers and desktops in such popular operating systems,
there are potentially millions of vulnerable computers out there right now. The security
industry sent out a widespread warning about two weeks ago, spurring many companies to
install the necessary patch, which was available from Microsoft a month ago.
