E-Mail Worm Sobig.F Began on Porn Newsgroup-Expert
Reuters
By Elinor Mills Abreu
SAN FRANCISCO (Reuters) - The FBI subpoenaed an Arizona Internet service provider to trace the culprit behind a fast-spreading e-mail virus that security experts said may have first been posted to an adult pictures Internet site.
One expert said the Sobig.F e-mail virus was disguised so that anyone who clicked on a link purporting to show a sexually graphic picture became infected with the self-replicating worm, which then spread itself to other e-mail addresses.
"Sobig.F was first posted to a porn Usenet group," said Jimmy Kuo, research fellow at anti-virus software maker Network Associates Inc. Usenet is a popular forum on the Internet where computer users with similar interests post and read messages.
So far, as many as 100,000 computers have been infected with Sobig.F, which in turn has spewed "millions upon millions of infected e-mails" to other Internet users, Kuo added.
"We've seen multistage attacks before, but this is probably the most effective example of that," said Bruce Schneier, chief technology officer of Counterpane Internet Security. "What can a million computers do if they're told to? Anything."
Sobig.F spreads when unsuspecting computer users open file attachments in e-mails that contain such familiar headings as "Thank You!," "Re: Details" or "Re: That Movie."
Once the file is opened, Sobig.F resends itself to e-mail addresses from the infected computer and signs the e-mail using a random name and address from the computer's address book.
Since Monday, computer users from Korea to Norway have struggled to fend off a variety of attacks that cripple corporate e-mail networks and have filled home users' inboxes with a glut of messages, before fanning out to find more victims.
Consulting firm Booz Allen Hamilton, Air Canada, transport company CSX Corp. are among hundreds of companies that have suffered network attacks from recent viruses.
Employees at the New York Times headquarters in midtown Manhattan were asked to shut down their computers, but a spokesman declined to comment on the cause of the shutdown.
"We will not speculate on the cause, effect or scope of the problem... We plan to get the paper out tomorrow."
NEXT THREAT COMES SUNDAY
Sobig.F was written to expire on Sept. 10, but experts said they expect another version to follow. This is the sixth version of the portentously named virus since it first appeared in January.
The worm has been clogging e-mail inboxes with a hidden command directing infected PCs to make contact with one of 20 vulnerable computers at 12:00 PT California time every Friday and Sunday until it expires, said Steve Trilling, chief researcher at anti-virus vendor Symantec Corp. .
Government and industry security experts raced against the clock on Friday and were able to take offline 19 of the 20 home computers before the 12 noon deadline, said Mikko Hypponen, anti-virus research manager at F-Secure of Finland.
The 19 computers were located in the United States, Canada and South Korea, he said. The remaining master computer, which was located in the United States, was taken down shortly after the deadline, experts said.
Experts had worried that the timed attack would slow down Internet traffic and possibly set in motion a new set of commands that would allow Sobig.F to update itself and launch new attacks. However, they cautioned that it was too early to tell whether the threat of Sobig had ended and cautioned that the next attack on deadline could unleash new problems.
Internet service provider Easynews.com of Phoenix, Arizona said it had been contacted by investigators by telephone on Thursday and the company was issued a subpoena on Friday.
"It looks like the original variant was posted through us to Usenet on the 18th (of August)," Michael Minor, the Internet service provider's chief technology officer, told Reuters.
An FBI spokesman said that the organization was working with the U.S. Department of Homeland Security to investigate who was responsible for the e-mail attacks. He declined to comment further.
Experts have speculated that Sobig.F was designed to turn computers into spam relay machines as previous versions did. (Additional reporting by Eric Auchard, Kenneth Li and Derek Caney in New York, Tim McLaughlin in Boston, Jim Christie and Andrea Orr in San Francisco and Bernhard Warner in London) |
