Blackworm

[Second]

Well, hope all of you are set for disaster in 40 minutes.

And if it's not too late for some of you..
http://securityresponse.symantec.com...kmal.e@mm.html

[grimnocturnal]

what the fuck are you talking about?

[Second]

what the fuck are you talking about?

http://isc.sans.org/diary.php?storyid=1067
http://www.lurhq.com/blackworm-stats.html

It was getting a bit of coverage on the news..thought it would pertain to more..guess not.

[TheCotMan]

Yep. There have been blurbs in the news about this. Early stories wrote that MS was not going to offer a special update release in its malware removal tool unless you were a paying subscriber to their network... something about them releasing the removal as part of the normal monthly release (Feb 14?), but not a special "early release" unless you're a paying customer.

[Edit: Added content]
SlashDot had a story

[Second]

Yep. There have been blurbs in the news about this. Early stories wrote that MS was not going to offer a special update release in its malware removal tool unless you were a paying subscriber to their network... something about them releasing the removal as part of the normal monthly release (Feb 14?), but not a special "early release" unless you're a paying customer.

[Edit: Added content]
SlashDot had a story

Oh well..paying or not, the job gets done

[ck3k]

My parents called me earlier, and where freaking out, guess the media is really running with this one. If only this energy spent on hype would translate into better security practices.

[AlxRogan]

what the fuck are you talking about?

Instead of instantly berating someone for something you obviously know nothing about, why don't you check out the link he posted. It is a concise summary of a fairly devastating virus/worm.

Here's hoping your boxes aren't part of the problem.

[Floydr47]

You would think that it would be to Microsoft's advantage to release the tool early in order to maintain the security of Microsoft products whether the user was a paying subscriber or not. I am not against making money but if a person (or corporation) sees a crime commited it is his/her civic responsability to take action. I simply don't believe that Microsoft's obligation to the customer ends at the time of product sale. Thanks, CotMan and Second for the links, they were very informative.

[xgermx]

I have heard a decent amount of media coverage on this (slow news week?). As you know virus = fear, fear = good news ratings. I'm not saying there's no threat here but ideally media coverage would be proportionate to the threat level. It could be worse, they could be calling it Y2K6F3.

[AlxRogan]

Analysis
The email worm known as BlackWorm/Nyxem/Blackmal/Blueworm/Grew is scheduled to delete (actually overwriting with a small text message) certain file types on Feb 3, 2006.

We have been tracking the worldwide infections of this worm by means of a web stats counter the worm reports infections to. Currently it is at 679,000, but has tapered off in the last day or so. Even though this seems like a large number, as email viruses go, it is not a major threat in terms of email volume. The threat posed by this worm is the overwriting of files which is scheduled to occur on February 3, 2006. The file types in question are DOC, XLS, MDB, MDE, PPT, PPS, ZIP, RAR, PDF, PSD and DMP.

Taken from http://www.lurhq.com/blackworm.html

EDIT: Just realized that Second had posted this link earlier, sorry for the dupe.

[Second]

Well, 8:30 am, no damage evident at the house. PHEW! Anyone have any unfortunate news to report?

[converge]

...yawm ..

[Deviant Ollam]

nothing... not a sausage. nary a whisper of trouble has been heard from any of the places where i lend a hand with things.

[ck3k]

It's 2pm and my cell has yet to start going off, think this was all hype. Has anyone/anyone's network even seen this in the wild?

[AlxRogan]

I got one notice from a copy in a user's mailbox, only signs of it here.