Sober.P Worm Accounts for 5% of all Email Traffic 451
destuxor writes "The grave insecurity of the day is the Sober.P worm which is currently pushing nearly 5% of all email traffic at the moment. Unlike previous worms, Sober can disable the Windows Firewall and Symantec Antivirus. Interestingly, patched machines are not vulnerable to the exploits used by this worm. What are we going to have to do to convince "ordinary users" to visit WindowsUpdate once in a while?" update percentage corrected.
Reading the article? (Score:5, Informative)
RTFA, Taco (Score:5, Informative)
From the first line ... 5%, not 25%. Big difference ....
Updates too big to download (Score:1, Informative)
Not make the update 100mb+?
How can anyone download that when the only connection they have to the internet is a modem.
Re:Visiting windows update once in a while (Score:4, Informative)
Now, for the caveat. As is the case with any type of email scanner, it is very resource intensive. As such, I have a dedicated dual Athlon machine which handles scanning for 50-100,000 emails/day and it stays very busy (load over 1, >50% processor utilization).
Re:Nothing really (Score:3, Informative)
Windows Update downloads in the background, and allows other programs the bandwith they need. It should never be a problem, even over dial-up. If you didn't have the patience to wait out the download of SP2 over a slow connection, you could mail order it on CD from Microsoft, no charge, even for postage.
Re:Reading the article? (Score:2, Informative)
I have a similar story.
ClamAV [clamav.net] blocked the first one on my server at 00:20 CET on may 3rd. Since then I have recieved exactly 100 Sober.P containing mails. And I only have one publicly known email address on that server.
It's almost a 20 fold increase in blocked mails.
Re:To make them patch their machines...... (Score:2, Informative)
For more info google for Nachi.
Jason.
Re:Only 1 way (Score:1, Informative)
It hurts to get kicked in the cooch. Probably not as much as in the balls, but as there are very few people indeed in a position to directly compare, and as males tend to have lower pain thresholds than females, it's difficult to say how much less.
Re:White hats... (Score:5, Informative)