PCWorld: New Worm Travels by IM

[Charles]

According to researches at PivX Solutions a new worm has surfaced, but this one travels via instant messaging. This worm has been labeled as the next generation of the Scob worm, this new worm has already started to infect Web sites in Russia, Uruguay, and now the United States.

This worm has the same basic instructions as a worm called "Scob" or "Download.ject." Back in June Scob attacked un-patched Windows 2000 systems running IIS Version 5. This was done by exploiting a buffer overflow vulnerability in Microsoft's implementation of the Secure Sockets Layer. This 'next generation' of Scob sends instant messages containing the following text "Check out my new home page!” followed by a link. This message can be sent from your either your friends or strangers. The link provided in the message takes the user to several attack Web pages where a Trojan horse program is downloaded.

As is the case with most worms/viruses Microsoft has already released a patch. If you keep up to date with your 'Critical Updates' then your machine should be fine. However, PivX has yet to determine the total amount of damage that this worm inflicts. Recommending that even if users have applied the necessary update not to click on the link. Especially if their system was previously infected with the Scob worm.

Source

[Oreo]

Yeah, I saw something about this on Yahoo!'s front page news links. This is why I don't click on links in Im's...no matter how well I know the person. Sometimes the links don't come from them.