Friday, July 15, 2005

Major Windows exploit 'days away'

#114 I don't normally cover virus alterts and so forth on this site however there are several new trends that have developed and been covered in this site this month that relate to this warning from Microsoft.

The first thing that I want to point out is that we are nearing zero-day expolits. "Hackers are actively exploiting two serious security vulnerabilities in Windows, Microsoft warned on Tuesday as it released "critical" alerts about the flaws." It does not take very long (days) before some major new announced vulnerability is exploited.

The second thing is that hackers are now focussed on growing their botnet armies as opposed to getting their names in the press and causing havoc and mayhem. "Attackers are already using the JView Profiler flaw to download and install Trojan horses on victims' machines," said Dan Hubbard, senior director at Websense Security Labs. The Trojan horses would let the miscreants remotely control the hijacked PCs and make it part of a network of such computers known as a botnet, an increasing cyberthreat."

Now the real worrying thing is that because hackers are now trying to go "under the radar" with more focussed, smaller and less public/destructive "aquisitions" of botnets we may never really know how successful their exploit is will we? Hmm.
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