Last Friday a new set of worms of the Beagle variety were released into the Internet. This set of worms is set to target the most vulnerable of Internet users: home broadband customers. The difference between home users and business users is that most corporate users are behind a properly configured firewall. The speculation as to why four versions of Beagle were launched has to do with just what a worm can really do on a PC. A worm such as Beagle can be used as a Trojan horse to download additional malicious code from a website. In this way, the entity in control of the worm/Trojan horse can force the download and execution of code from a specific website. This turns the infected machines into slave machines which, when seen as a total accumulation, gives the hacker/worm author/distributor the ability to sell incredible amounts of stolen computer resources to spammers and phishers. This is yet another reason to make sure that virus software and Microsoft patches are kept up to date. Naturally, your Responsive consultant can help you maintain the correct level of patching on your systems. |
