“Computer hackers may quietly be infecting thousands of
Windows PCs in preparation for another wave of DoS
(denial-of-service) attacks of the type that brought
high-profile Web sites such as Yahoo Inc. and eBay Inc. to their
knees two weeks ago, security experts warned yesterday.”
“James Madison University discovered last week that 16 Windows
PCs on its student network had been infected with what looked like
a variant of ‘Trinoo,’ one of a handful of viruses that hackers
have been using to launch DoS attacks. The Harrisonburg, Va.-based
school has sent a sample of the virus, which it has dubbed
‘Wintrinoo,’ to the Computer Emergency Response Team (CERT) for
analysis, the university stated on its Web site yesterday.”
“Meanwhile, a university in Florida and a large corporation in
Washington this week also discovered Windows PCs that had been
infected by a version of Trinoo, said Stephen Northcutt, director
of the Global Incident Analysis Center at the System
Administration, Networking, and Security (SANS) Institute.”