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Posted in Microsoft, Security, Windows at 10:47 am by Dr. Roy Schestowitz
THERE ARE SO MANY MICROSOFT failure stories to share today that it’s hard to decide where to start.
Microsoft’s security nightmares as of late [1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7] are where we begin by presenting the following report about a government site in Australia getting cracked and doing enough harm that it needed to be shut down.
=> 1 | 2 | 3 | 4 | 5 | 6 | 7 | ↺ doing enough harm that it needed to be shut down
Like you, I get masses of spam. I knew it wasn’t from jobs.nsw.gov.au no matter how much it pretended to be. I deleted it figuring it was “just another” bit of junk mail, although I was surprised to find one purporting to be from the NSW Government job board; that was definitely a new one on me!Had I thought about it deeper I might have considered this was no ordinary spam. This time there was a direct relationship between how the spammers got my e-mail address and the organisation they purported to represent.It turns out the Department of Commerce has taken this whole incident very seriously indeed, and far more than common garden-variety spam would necessitate.If you visit the site jobs.nsw.gov.au you will see it is inaccessible, and in fact, has been for a week. A message advises that the system is down for “system maintenance.”
The site is powered by Microsoft IIS.
Moving on a little, it turns out that Obama’s Web site too is causing harm. Some pages in it are distributing Windows malware.
=> ↺ distributing Windows malware
Web security firm Websense reports that malicious hackers have registered multiple bogus user accounts on My.BarackObama.com. The site allows legitimate punters to join groups, raise funds, or creates blogs. The griefers have established blogs with fake YouTube clips, ostensibly offering grumble flicks.
According to some new statistics, there is a sharp increase in distribution of Windows malware, with more malicious sites than one can practically keep track of:
AVG is seeing between 200,000 to 300,000 new Web sites per day hosting code that can in some cases result in a PC being infected with malware just by visiting the site, said Roger Thompson, AVG’s chief research officer.
Conficker is still running wild and it’s draining resources along its path (human resources and Web resources).
=> ↺ draining resources along its path
The world’s top virus hunters are watching every move made by the attacker in control of a nasty new Internet worm — referred to as “downadup” or “conficker.”
The number of infected Windows PCs keeps growing fast.
A virulent computer virus has infected as many as 15 million computers around the world so far, according to various estimates.The virus — a self-replicating computer worm known as Downadup, Conficker or Kido — spreads across computer networks using Microsoft Windows software which have not been patched or updated properly. Microsoft issued a patch that fixes the vulnerability the virus exploits last October.
This is also covered here.
=> ↺ here
Computer experts are preparing to respond to further virus outbreaks and security threats posed by the Windows worm, known as Conficker, Kido and Downadup, which has infected more than 15 million PCs worldwide.
Had Microsoft cared about security rather than premature announcements (vapourware) and irresponsible releases, the Internet would have been a better and safer place to travel. █
=> vapourware
“Our products just aren’t engineered for security.”
–Brian Valentine, Microsoft executive
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