“Apache Killer” tool spotted in the wild

The developers behind the open source Apache Foundation issued a warning for all users of the Apache HTTPD Web Server, as an attack tool it has been made available on the Internet and has already been spotted being actively used.

The bug in question is a Denial-of-Service vulnerability that allows the attacker to execute the attack remotely and to take over a great amount of memory and CPU usage with only a modest number of request directed at the Web Server.

And even though the vulnerability has been spotted more than four years ago by Google security engineer Michal Zalewski, it has never been patched.

The attack can be deployed against all versions in the 1.3 and 2.0 lines, but as the Foundation no longer supports the 1.3 line, a patch will be issued only for Apache 2.0 and 2.2, and it should be out by Friday evening.

While waiting for it, administrators have been provided with a number of mitigation steps that should prevent attacks against their server.