New Virus: W32/IRCbot.worm!MS05-039

[Hope]

Hi Folks,

Here is the information on the newest nasty out there. This is a HIGH RISK virus. It is called W32/IRCbot.worm!MS05-039. This worm is designed to contact a remote IRC server and wait for further instructions.

A fast-spreading Internet Relay Chat (IRC) bot worm affecting systems worldwide, W32/IRCbot.worm!MS05-039 exploits a recently announced Microsoft operating system vulnerability to spread and possibly help a remote hacker control an infected system.

You can be infected simply by going online. Once infected, your system may continually reboot.

The virus copies itself to the Windows System directory (e.g. C:\Windows\System32\ on Windows XP) as WINTBP.EXE.

The file can be run automatically by exploiting the MS05-039 vulnerability or by a user directly executing the worm.

McAfee has a free tool to scan for this virus.

[donecweb]

Thanks for the info Hope.

[Queen Bee]

Why do people see the need to cause this kind of destruction? These guys need to play more Sim City and leave the real destruction to the personal computer owners themselves.

Anyway, thanks for the info.

[Hope]

This has taken down a lot of networks. It is amazing how fast this one spread.

Rachel, they do it for pride. They can go online and say "I made the news." Personally I would like to make the news for good things, but then again, I am not a cyberpunk.

[Queen Bee]

What people will do to others to satisfy their own egos... I guess it makes a little more sense than just useless vandalism. I just think this people could find better use of their time... You know, get involved in sports or something. Maybe we need anti-virus/hacker commercials.

Real Life - My Anti-Virus

[Hope]

The people who usually make these kinds of virus are the steriotypical "Geek." Very few friends, not that good looking, glasses, bad social skills, enjoy the company of computers more than humans and they are always super intellegent. They don't like people because they don't know how to deal with them. This is their way of facing the world. They need to prove their worth among their kind. That means making a bigger badder virus than the one before them.  They are the same people who hack into computers. They do it because they can.

[donecweb]

In an attempt to help some very good people I am trying to get people to change the way they use certain words like Hacker and "hack into computers" the groups of people that do the things so often referred to with these words are more accurately referred to as crackers or people that "crack into computers". It is true that Crackers often have the same need to prove their worth among their kind but they also tend to be malicious in many other ways like sending viruses and such just to do harm and seldom do good.

Hackers on the other hand are a benefit to our society and we need to let them know they are. Yes "they need to prove their worth among their kind". In fact this is part of the driving force behind the OpenSource community which has benefited so many such as myself. It is also why it is sometimes hard to understand their attitudes about things we want changed in a program. The change may seem important to us but to their standing with their peers it is not and since their standing with their peers is so important to them then the change we want may not be. Yet we benefit from their hard work and they are "Hackers". They use their need for peer support and their "super intelligence" to do good instead of causing problems (except for M$  ).

[Hope]

Don, you are correct. I was wrong. We are talking about crackers. I actually have a good friend who is a hacker and has yelled at me more times than I care to mention about the difference.

[donecweb]

Well I wasn't trying to fuss at you but instead tried to take advantage of your post to help others understand this. Hope you let your friend know there are people out here that are not programmers but that appreciate the work "Hackers" do for us.