New Nimda variant hits Net, users urged to patch
Source: CNN
L33tdawg: I think this might be the virus that has been affecting a mate of mine, Jooz. He was telling me the other day that his machine has been infected with some weird ass virus, and last night he called me, frantic over the fact that his machine was totally trashing about and he couldn't seem to fix it... Has anyone else come in contact with this new variant?
IDG) -- A new variant of the Nimda worm has appeared on the Internet, although exactly how it is different or whether it will be more or less serious than the original worm is so far undetermined, anti-virus firms said Tuesday. Nonetheless, users are cautioned to patch their systems as soon as possible to prevent infection.
The Nimda worm first wrought havoc across the Internet in mid September, spreading itself as an e-mail attachment, Web traffic, through shared hard disks on networks, and by infecting users who browsed Web pages hosted on infected servers. When spread as an e-mail, Nimda arrives as an attachment called "Readme.exe." But when spread through infected Web pages, Nimda files are often automatically downloaded to a user's computer with prompting. The original worm spread worldwide in about 30 minutes and caused some companies to forbid users from going online until patches and upgrades could be put in place.
Nimda had spawned three variants before Tuesday, Nimda.b, Nimda.c, and Nimda.d, although none were particularly dangerous or different from the original, according to an alert released Tuesday by anti-virus company Kasperksy Labs.
