“Security companies and network administrators are clearing
their weekend schedules and preparing to address the threat of the
latest version of the BackOrifice hacking tool that is reportedly
to be released this Saturday at the DefCon show in Las Vegas.”
“At last year’s DefCon, the group Cult of the Dead Cow (cDc) and
a member code-named Sir Dystic, released BackOrifice as a Trojan
horse program that once it is activated can provide remote access
to Windows 95 and Windows 98 client machines. This year at DefCon,
the cDc is promising to release a new version, called BackOrifice
2000 (BO2K), with the capability to access Windows NT machines, and
will provide open source of the code.”
“… we are going to be working here around the clock,” said
Gordon Twilegar, director of security strategies for Computer
Associates…”
“That the cDc intends to release the tool as open source also
worries security experts, because variations or combinations of the
tool with viruses such as Melissa will be much easier to
create.”