March 17, 2004
Phatbot uses known vulnerabilities to infect systems and can be used by attackers to steal information and control systems.
By George V. Hulme
Computer-security companies warned Wednesday that a new malicious Trojan horse that targets Windows systems has been spotted on the Internet. Dubbed Phatbot, the Trojan was first noticed by antivirus companies earlier this week.
"We started getting reports of infections early Monday," says Craig Schmugar, a virus researcher with McAfee antivirus and vulnerability emergency-response team at Network Associates Inc.
Phatbot, which already has several variants, is leveraging a long list of software flaws to infect systems. According to security researchers, Phatbot scans for systems that have unpatched Windows vulnerabilities, including DCOM, DCOM2, locator service, network shares using weak passwords, WebDav, and the Windows Workstation Service. It will also attack systems already infected with the MyDoom worm.
More: http://www.informationweek.com/story/showArticle.jhtml?articleID=18400700&_loopback=1

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