Sharing Files Networks Under Attack
Peer-to-Peer technologies are vulnerable to viruses…
Bucharest, ROMANIA – May 20, 2002 – BitDefender Response Team today discovered a threat to endanger Kazaa software and immediately developed a disinfection tool to stop the worm spreading in the wild. The virus called Win32.Worm.Benjamin is an “advertiser”, displaying advertising banners from an anonymous site as a payload.
“After Gnutella being attacked almost a year ago, it was to be expected that other fast growing P2P networks will be the next victims of virus writers” said Sorin Dudea, Virus Researcher at BitDefender, SOFTWIN. “The first Kazaa virus uses an impressive list of over 1000 titles including recent movies, MP3 songs or extremely valuable software kits, to trick users into downloading its body. Even if the virus doesn’t specify this, it might be an attempt to stop software and DivX movies distribution through exchange file networks” Sorin concluded.
BitDefender Response Team strived to quickly develop a disinfection tool, available for free on its website. The virus is already spreading in the wild at great speed, so all users who have downloaded files through Kazaa network are advised to immediately use this tool in order to avoid further virus propagation.
The free tool to remove this virus is to be found at
http://www.bitdefender.com/html/free_tools.php.
BitDefender users are protected against this new threat since May 20, 2002, 12:00 (GMT+2) through the automatic update feature.
BitDefender Professional starts at $ 44.95, and a free 30-day trial version may be downloaded from http://www.bitdefender.com/evaluation/evaluation.php.
For technical details about this threat and about its removal as well as for virus screenshots, please visit http://www.bitdefender.com/html/virus_info.php.
About SOFTWIN
Founded in 1990, SOFTWIN is a leading provider of PC anti-virus software and computer security services. The company has developed and applied cutting-edge technologies in over 500 software applications and more than 2,500 data conversion projects for clients in the United States and Europe. BitDefender, its flagship product, is only the third product of its kind in the world to receive ICSA certification for Windows XP. SOFTWIN is headquartered in Bucharest, Romania, and employs more than 400.
The mission of the SOFTWIN data security department is to ensure the protection of systems against computer viruses, to do antivirus research, to develop new technologies for monitoring all possible ways to infect a system and, last but not least, to educate the IT public of the danger of computer viruses.