Teen Busted For Sasser Worm as New One Hits

In addition to the news below about the latest Sasser worm variant, Microsoft announced today that 1.5 million people have downloaded their Sasser detection and removal tool. Have you? Are you patched? Is your anti-virus software up-to-date?

Teen Busted For Sasser Worm as New One Hits

By Ryan Naraine

Even as Microsoft and law enforcement authorities celebrated the arrest of a German teenager believed to be the mastermind behind the malicious Sasser worm, anti-virus firms have quarantined yet another mutant attacking vulnerable Windows users.

Over the weekend, Microsoft announced the arrest of an unidentified 18-year-old in connection with the creation and distribution of the Sasser worm that exploits a flaw in the Local Security Authority Subsystem Service (LSASS), but the new development does not end to the threat.

According to anti-virus specialist Symantec, a new variant (W32.Sasser.E.Worm) has appeared and is exploiting the LSASS vulnerability described in Microsoft's MS04-011 patch. Sasser.E, which is being widely distributed, spreads by scanning randomly selected IP addresses for vulnerable systems. 'W32.Sasser.E.Worm can run on, but not infect, Windows 95/98/Me computers. Although these operating systems cannot be infected, they can still be used to infect vulnerable computers,' Symantec warned.