Thank You SirCam, May I Have Another? - Secrets are out there !
The SirCam worm/virus combo has now been asking your "advice" for almost a week. But even when it infects an FBI computer, it's not getting any more dangerous - just more embarrassing. Proving that even professionals can spread computer diseases, a researcher in the FBI's online security unit accidentally helped send SirCam across the globe on Tuesday.
It didn't snare any other FBI computers, said the Wall Street Journal, but it did "send at least eight documents to a number of outsiders." One was marked "official use only," but the feds say nothing sensitive was revealed: "Official use only" is just code to keep documents out of the U.S. Freedom of Information Act's domain....
"I love the irony, but this isn't the first time that virus experts have been tripped up in the process of doing virus analysis," a virus expert told Newsbytes.
The Journal agreed that virus researchers have been known to infect themselves, "but the mistake was particularly embarrassing because it occurred ahead of a Senate Judiciary panel's oversight hearing about the FBI cyber unit's effectiveness."
Humiliation has been a theme in other SirCam coverage, since SirCam's m.o. is to send a randomly selected file from the infected hard drive. The Guardian seemed particularly incensed that SirCam could invade "the infected PC's My Documents folder - where most users store their most private or sensitive material."
Wired News agreed that "many people tend to store the majority of their files in that folder, giving SirCam a wide selection of potentially sensitive documents to send off to friends and strangers."
A CNET source in Pennsylvania said he got memos, resumes and a Visa number, while CNET itself got subject lines like "Dear Diary," "Wayne Gretzky" and "Pork with Leeks and Egg." Oh, stop, we're blushing.
CNet.
