Meet the Next-Gen Web Worm
This internet-borne virus stuff is getting scarier and scarier every minute. We're soon approaching a day when patch management alone just won't be enough to protect you against the stuff that's out there.
This piece from the Dark Reading web site tells a worrisome story...
Up to now, Web-borne worms couldn't be easily spread from host to host, and they have usually been easy to detect. But two researchers have written a proof-of-concept of a more deadly and persistent Web worm that can run in both the client's browser and on a Web server -- and evades signature-based scans.
The so-called "hybrid Web worm" has more staying power than previous Web worms -- such as the infamous Samy worm that infected MySpace -- that were restricted to specific hosts and domains, and typically only exploited a single vulnerability."As [researcher] HD Moore put it, [these older Web worms] were like a smallpox epidemic on a small island," says Billy Hoffman, lead researcher for SPI Dynamics' Labs and co-author of the hybrid worm proof-of-concept. "Samy couldn't leave MySpace."
At the Black Hat conference next month, Hoffman and fellow researcher John Terrill will demonstrate their wily, next-generation Web worm in a session entitled "The Little Hybrid Web Worm that Could." Their new worm mutates to evade signature detection -- it can even use vulnerability information from sites like Secunia to infect other servers and browsers.
"We're going to demonstrate how it can pull new vulnerability information in the wild and start using it" to spread, Hoffman says.
This only furthers my belief that responsible Windows Server admins have to start thinking now about anti-malware technologies that go above and beyond patch management alone.
Your thoughts on this? Do you have the concern (and therefore the cash) about these sorts of things?
Full post at:
http://www.darkreading.com/document.asp?doc_id=128355
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