worm strikes down windows2000 systems

[elusiveelf]

Worm strikes down Windows 2000 systems

Problems reported in three continents

WASHINGTON (CNN) -- A fast-moving computer worm Tuesday attackedcomputer systems using Microsoft operating systems, shutting down computers in the United States, Germany and Asia.

Among those hit were offices on Capitol Hill, which is in the midst of August recess, and media organizations, including CNN, ABC and The New York Times. The Caterpillar Co. in Peoria, Illinois, reportedly also had problems.

A small number of computers in an administrative office at San Francisco International Airport also crashed, but they were not essential to the airport's operation, spokesman Mike McCarron said.

The FBI said the computer problems did not appear to be part of any widespread attack.

While the worm affects primarily Windows 2000, it also can affect some early versions of Microsoft XP, said Johannes Ullrich, director of the Sans Institute, a network security firm based in Jacksonville, Florida.

Symptoms include the repeated shutdown and rebooting of a computer.

Microsoft has a downloadable patch on its security homepage, Microsoft.com/security, a company spokesperson said. The spokesperson told CNN that Microsoft would not estimate how many users have been affected and described the problem as low-impact.

Lysa Myers, a virus researcher for the computer security firm McAfee, Inc., said the worm exploits a vulnerability in Microsoft's plug-and-play service. "How it's spreading is it's looking for machines that are unpatched and running itself," she said.

What was causing the damage was unclear, although experts pointed to a new worm called worm-rbot.cbq.

David Perry of Trend Micro, an Internet monitoring firm, said the latest worm may have been derived from the Zotob worm, which was first reported over the weekend.

Ullrich, of the Sans Institute, said Zotob "will connect to a control server to ask for instructions. It scans network neighborhoods and tries to infect them, as well."

Typically, the worm enters a system via a laptop connected to unsecured networks, Ullrich said. "This laptop will infect your systems from the inside."

Several versions of the worm have been released, some as late as Tuesday, he said.

Around 5 p.m. problems began at CNN facilities in New York and Atlanta before being cleared up about 90 minutes later.

The New York Times also was able to bring its systems back up, and "newspaper production will not be affected," spokeswoman Kathy Park said.

The White House said it did not have reports of computer problems.

At any given time there are thousands of computer worms and viruses in existence.

So far, the impact has not been as great as the 2003 Blaster virus attack, said Jeff Havrila, a technical analyst with the U.S. Computer Emergency Readiness Team, a coalition of public and private groups that combats computer attacks.

He noted that improved firewalls and faster patches may have limited the worm's spread.

He also said it is unclear how long the worm may take to run its course, noting that many people are away on summer vacation and may be affected only when they return.

Find this article at:

/http://www.cnn.com/2005/TECH/internet/08/16/computer.worm/index.html