The Register: Worms Turn on Win/Linux Users

"Amid the panic last week about the prolific, and very nasty, BearBug worm two more nasty varmints went largely unnoticed.

"Hot on the heels of the Slapper, comes the Mighty worm which uses the same well-known OpenSSL exploit to gain access to and infect computers running an Apache Web server on Linux. Mighty uses the same spreading routines as Slapper but with several subtle differences.

"In addition to infecting systems, Mighty also sets up a backdoor utility which can be controlled over an IRC channel. The Trojan component can be used to steal information from compromised machines, corrupt data or set up DdoS attack networks..."

Complete Story

Related Stories:

• eWEEK: Open Source: a False Sense of Security?(Oct 01, 2002)
• Vnunet: Two on New Slapper Worm Developments(Sep 24, 2002)
• Common Criteria: Slapper Worm Stops Slapping(Sep 23, 2002)