New Worm in town

The Sasser Worm is the latest internet threat to be scarring the world but in Namibia its barely shown its head.

Local internet provision companies are in varying degrees of awareness about the Internet worm that is making headlines since its appearance on the world wide web this past weekend. Sasser targets users of Microsoft Windows 2000, NT and XP operating systems causing the personal computers to reboot without warning.Symantec.com reports that the worm also causes significant performance degradation on infected computer systems.Downloads and anti-virus patches are already available on the internet for download and Namibian internet service providers have had very few complaints about this worm yet.Elmar Roux of I-Way pointed out that Sasser is different because it is a network virus and not a mail-virus.He reported only two complaints but said that apart from anti-vitus software and firewalls I-Way has blocked the IP-ports the virus uses to spread.Carlo Richter of M-Web said complaints were, “a few but not many but definitely the number of infections could increase.”He said that for Namibia, Sasser, “hasn’t made an appearance yet, it usually takes three to four days.”He advised clients to run windows updates to take out the vulnerability that the worm targets and said the M-Web had already alerted its clients of the threat via E-mail.Quiton Kotze of Incredible Networks said they had received no complaints to date and Tim Pribe of UUNet agreed saying, “none of our customers have reported anything.”Pribe said UUNet’s anti-virus scanners update automatically so he does not expect a problem noting that most of UUNet’s clients run their own mail servers and so have their own security measures.According to Cyberhost.com.na, the virus has already infected 2597 systems worldwide.This worm spreads by scanning randomly selected IP addresses of vulnerable systems, the Internet security site said.Sasser targets users of Microsoft Windows 2000, NT and XP operating systems causing the personal computers to reboot without warning.Symantec.com reports that the worm also causes significant performance degradation on infected computer systems.Downloads and anti-virus patches are already available on the internet for download and Namibian internet service providers have had very few complaints about this worm yet.Elmar Roux of I-Way pointed out that Sasser is different because it is a network virus and not a mail-virus.He reported only two complaints but said that apart from anti-vitus software and firewalls I-Way has blocked the IP-ports the virus uses to spread.Carlo Richter of M-Web said complaints were, “a few but not many but definitely the number of infections could increase.”He said that for Namibia, Sasser, “hasn’t made an appearance yet, it usually takes three to four days.”He advised clients to run windows updates to take out the vulnerability that the worm targets and said the M-Web had already alerted its clients of the threat via E-mail.Quiton Kotze of Incredible Networks said they had received no complaints to date and Tim Pribe of UUNet agreed saying, “none of our customers have reported anything.”Pribe said UUNet’s anti-virus scanners update automatically so he does not expect a problem noting that most of UUNet’s clients run their own mail servers and so have their own security measures.According to Cyberhost.com.na, the virus has already infected 2597 systems worldwide.This worm spreads by scanning randomly selected IP addresses of vulnerable systems, the Internet security site said.