Government concerned about MySpooler worm
The National Infrastructure Security Co-ordination Centre (NISCC) has issued an alert over the MySpooler worm reported yesterday, which threatens Windows servers with weak passwords for root access to MySQL.
NISCC, which was set up to minimise risk to the UK's critical national infrastructure from electronic attacks, posted the warning on its Web site after its Australian counterpart AusCERT alerted users to the worm. It highlighted that the worm's most destructive feature is its potential ability to facilitate massive distributed-denial-of-service attacks.
"AusCERT has become aware of a new worm currently exploiting MySQL on Windows systems. The worm infects systems using an automated attack on weak passwords for the MySQL "root" account," warned NISCC.
"MySQL administrators are encouraged to apply the mitigation steps below as soon as possible to prevent infection. Non-Windows MySQL systems are not targeted by this worm, but are vulnerable to the same attack if MySQL is running as root," the Centre added.
MySpool is thought to be recruiting thousands of machines for distributed-denial-of-service attacks, which use compromised computers that act cooperatively to disable target machines by flooding them with data.
