Well, the blaster worm and its variants (including the "helpful" version that patches you for yourself) is making its rounds, though I think at this point the thing's dying down, which is good. One interesting side effect may well be a massive upswing in the number of computers infected with viruses. I've gotten more than a hundred "your virus has been infected" bounces so far this morning, and I'm finding it hard to believe that so many postmasters but so few people have shiny fresh virus signatures. Seems more likely that the "reinstall windows" recommendations have been taken but folks either forgot to reinstall the virus scanner, or haven't grabbed the multimegabyte signature update for them yet.
Not that reinstalling windows in this case is a bad thing--given that the hole that blaster exploits has apparently been exploited by other, rather more nefarious and silent, programs for at least two weeks before blaster showed up, a full reinstall is likely a good thing. (Though there is always the issue of figuring out how to get a machine that's remotely exploitable patched when you have to be on the net to patch it...)
I'd have some hope that people will update themselves and get this taken care of, but I've looked at my logs--if folks haven't cleaned up after Nimda, Code Red, and Slammer yet, why the heck should I expect them to clean up after this one?
Posted by Dan at August 19, 2003 08:08 AM | TrackBack (0)