Expert worried Sobig author may accelerate next variant

Article

Expert worried Sobig author may accelerate next variant

Edward Hurley, SearchSecurity.com News Writer

Sobig-F's attempts to download a mystery program to infected machines failed over the weekend. But experts are not patting themselves on the back as they worry that the next variant of the worm, Sobig-G, may come sooner than expected.

"It may come early, as the worm writer's plan failed," said Mikko Hypponen, manager of antivirus research for F-Secure Corp., in Helsinki, Finland.

Sobig-F is programmed to download a program every Friday and Sunday, between 3 p.m. and 6 p.m. EDT, until Sept. 10. The worm is supposed to get a URL pointing to the program from one of 20 remote servers. Antivirus experts weren't able to ascertain what the downloaded program would do.

That may be moot at this point, because the 20 servers weren't accessible over the weekend. Eighteen were taken down by ISPs, Hypponen said. "It stands to reason that [if] we can't access them, then the worm wouldn't be able to either," he said.

ISPs were also filtering UDP port 8998 traffic over the weekend. The worm used that port to access the remote servers. Blocking it wasn't a huge issue because there are not a lot of legitimate uses for that port, Hypponen said.

It's not unusual for ISPs to filter certain kinds of traffic when threats are associated with them. For example, ISPs filtered port 135 traffic two weeks ago when Lovsan struck. They could only filter for a few days because companies had legitimate uses for that port, but it was enough to hamper the

    Requires Free Membership to View

    SearchSecurity.com members gain immediate and unlimited access to breaking industry news, virus alerts, new hacker threats, highly focused security newsletters, and more -- all at no cost. Join me on SearchSecurity.com today!

    Michael S. Mimoso, Editorial Director

    By submitting your registration information to SearchSecurity.com you agree to receive email communications from TechTarget and TechTarget partners. We encourage you to read our Privacy Policy which contains important disclosures about how we collect and use your registration and other information. If you reside outside of the United States, by submitting this registration information you consent to having your personal data transferred to and processed in the United States. Your use of SearchSecurity.com is governed by our Terms of Use. You may contact us at webmaster@TechTarget.com.

worm's progress.

In the case of port 8998, ISPs shouldn't have any problems filtering that port over the next couple of weeks.

FOR MORE INFORMATION:

SearchSecurity.com Virus Alert: Sobig-F and Nachi

SearchSecurity.com news exclusive: " Sobig-F ready to download mystery program"

SearchSecurity.com news exclusive: "Sobig-F reaching epidemic proportions"

SearchSecurity.com news exclusive: "Emergence of Sobig-F adds to malware mess"

SearchSecurity.com news exclusive: "Simple steps stem Sobig-F's progress"

SearchSecurity.com Ask the Experts