Hacker War Keeps the Worms Coming

The onslaught of worm variants has slowed slightly in the past few days, but at least one

security analyst says the attack of three vicious viruses seems far from over.

The Bagle, Netsky and MyDoom worms have been hitting the Internet in an incessant series of

waves over the past several weeks, straining IT managers, corporate networks and anti-virus

vendors. Earlier this week, seven variants of the Bagle worm were let loose in the wild

within a 72-hour period. Netsky had quickly revved up to the D-variant.

In the past few days, the pace has slowed but the variants keep on coming.

Bagle-K has been released. As for Netsky, variants F,G and H have hit the wild. And not to

be forgotten, the H variant of the virulent MyDoom virus was released as well.

”It’s been a pretty bad few weeks,” says Chris Belthoff, a senior analyst with Sophos,

Inc., a Lynnfield, Mass.-based anti-virus an anti-spam company. ”It’s not that any

particular variant is so bad, but it’s the incessant nature of this continual stream of

variants that is causing so many problems.”

And the viruses are wreaking a lot of havoc.

The Netsky family of worms has caused between $25.6 billion and $31.3 billion in damages

worldwide, according to mi2g, a security intelligence firm based in London. The Bagle family

has caused between $733 million and $896 million in damages. Bagle, Netsky and MyDoom have

infected more than 215 countries, reports mi2g analysts.

And analysts say that wave after wave of variants is running the industry ragged.

Every variant, even though they’re being released almost right on top of each other, is

different from its predecessor just enough to require the anti-virus vendors to update their

detection and filtering capabilities for each one. Central Command, Inc., an anti-virus

company based in Medina, Ohio., is advising its large users to update their anti-virus

software every hour, instead of once a day or several times a day.

Belthoff says keeping up this kind of pace is taking its toll.

”It’s keeping the anti-virus vendors on their toes, certainly,” adds Belthoff. ”And, of

course, it’s impacting corporate IT because of the increased load on their networks and

because they’ve having to deal with so many frustrated end users.”

What appears to be fueling the virus writers’ fire is that they’re actually sniping at each

other.

Belthoff explains that the Netsky worm, once it infected a computer, wiped out any Bagle

infection that might have been there. Three Netsky variants hold messages inside its coding,

sniping at the authors of Bagle and MyDoom. One message reads, ”We kill malware writers.

They have no chance.”

The Bagle authors quickly struck back, including their own messages, many of them R-rated at

the minimum, in several variants. One message reads in part, ”Hey Netsky… Don’t ruin our

business. Wanna start a war?”

This back and forth could keep the worms coming fast and furiously, Belthoff says.

”These virus writers are fighting a war amongst themselves for attention and

one-ups-manship, and we’re all getting caught in the crossfire,” he adds. ”The war definitely increases the chances that the variants will continue to come. But hopefully, it will help us pick up on clues as to who the virus writers are.”

RELATED NEWS AND ANALYSIS

• Ethics and Artificial Intelligence: Driving Greater Equality

  FEATURE |  By James Maguire,
  December 16, 2020

• AI vs. Machine Learning vs. Deep Learning

  FEATURE |  By Cynthia Harvey,
  December 11, 2020

• Huawei’s AI Update: Things Are Moving Faster Than We Think

  FEATURE |  By Rob Enderle,
  December 04, 2020

• Keeping Machine Learning Algorithms Honest in the ‘Ethics-First’ Era

  ARTIFICIAL INTELLIGENCE |  By Guest Author,
  November 18, 2020

• Key Trends in Chatbots and RPA

  FEATURE |  By Guest Author,
  November 10, 2020

• Top 10 AIOps Companies

  FEATURE |  By Samuel Greengard,
  November 05, 2020

• What is Text Analysis?

  ARTIFICIAL INTELLIGENCE |  By Guest Author,
  November 02, 2020

• How Intel’s Work With Autonomous Cars Could Redefine General Purpose AI

  ARTIFICIAL INTELLIGENCE |  By Rob Enderle,
  October 29, 2020

• Dell Technologies World: Weaving Together Human And Machine Interaction For AI And Robotics

  ARTIFICIAL INTELLIGENCE |  By Rob Enderle,
  October 23, 2020

• The Super Moderator, or How IBM Project Debater Could Save Social Media

  FEATURE |  By Rob Enderle,
  October 16, 2020

• Top 10 Chatbot Platforms

  FEATURE |  By Cynthia Harvey,
  October 07, 2020

• Finding a Career Path in AI

  ARTIFICIAL INTELLIGENCE |  By Guest Author,
  October 05, 2020

• CIOs Discuss the Promise of AI and Data Science

  FEATURE |  By Guest Author,
  September 25, 2020

• Microsoft Is Building An AI Product That Could Predict The Future

  FEATURE |  By Rob Enderle,
  September 25, 2020

• Top 10 Machine Learning Companies 2021

  FEATURE |  By Cynthia Harvey,
  September 22, 2020

• NVIDIA and ARM: Massively Changing The AI Landscape

  ARTIFICIAL INTELLIGENCE |  By Rob Enderle,
  September 18, 2020

• Continuous Intelligence: Expert Discussion [Video and Podcast]

  ARTIFICIAL INTELLIGENCE |  By James Maguire,
  September 14, 2020

• Artificial Intelligence: Governance and Ethics [Video]

  ARTIFICIAL INTELLIGENCE |  By James Maguire,
  September 13, 2020

• IBM Watson At The US Open: Showcasing The Power Of A Mature Enterprise-Class AI

  FEATURE |  By Rob Enderle,
  September 11, 2020

• Artificial Intelligence: Perception vs. Reality

  FEATURE |  By James Maguire,
  September 09, 2020