Re: New worm crawling trough blogs?!

[Nick FitzGerald <nick () virus-l demon co uk>]

blog.worm () gmail com wrote:

> I spotted it on Christopher Boyd's Vital Security blog. Chris is a
> Microsoft security MVP and security research manager at FaceTime, an
> instant messaging security company. However, this worm appears to have
> spread much further and has slithered around the world.

"worm"?

Raises two questions -- one about your understanding of a very simple 
security concept and another about the moderator's choice of items, as 
your post is purely a self-promoting (?) piece of fluff devoid of 
significant security implications...

> The worm is actually an animated GIF image. ...

And the universal GIF-parsing vulnerability it exploits to spread is?

That's right -- there isn't one.

Nor is there even such a vuln limited to one more or less popular web 
browser or similar application possibly used for handling/viewing such 
image files...

> ...  Bloggers all over have
> embedded it in their blogs and link to the creator's Web site.To
> infect your blog, you have to copy and paste a piece of HTML code into
> your blog.

So, it's the blog equivalent of the notoriously vicious ".sig virus"...

> This is funny, but on the flipside, however, there could be some
> security implications if the hoster of this "worm" decided to upload a
> malicious image that took control of the PC's that visit sites that
> show it. (Or if the hoster's site was hacked.)

Yep, and that is much the same risk as the possibility of a spammer or 
some other similarly unscrupulous sleaze-oid (like your typical 
adware/spyware pusher) finding (or buying) that same 0-day .GIF-
rendering sploit and deploying it through their own "distribution 
channels".

In short, there is no new or extended threat here...

> "There are no malicious plans with the blog worm," said Robin Schuil,
> its creator, in an e-mail.  ...

Well that's nice and reassuring, isn't it??

> ...  "However, it is a self mutating worm. From
> day to day it will say different things."

No -- folk with a few functioning brain cells will have immediately 
recognized, as did I, that it not a worm, therefore it cannot be a self 
mutating one.

And, of course, even fewer functioning brain cells are needed to work 
out that it is Robin Schuil who "mutates" the .GIF at the end of the 
static link this whole silly farce depends on, so it certainly is NOT a 
_self_ mutating anything...

> Still, as a precaution, we're hosting Thursday's version of the worm
> on our own servers. If you want to see it mutate, you will have to go
> to Robin's page. 
>
> Source: http://news.com.com/2061-10789_3-6031795.html

One may tempted, at this point, to draw a conclusion about the quality 
of journalists employed by news.com/C|Net, but as doing so in print may 
not please the list moderators (or at least, may agitate their lawyers 
were the moderators to accept such a posting), one will resist...


Regards,

Nick FitzGerald