More on MSBLAST by Bruce Garlock

Thu Aug 14 19:22:03 GMT 2003 More on MSBLAST by Bruce Garlock

Bruce Garlock writes:

The MSBLAST virus shows how many corporate and home PC's are still vulnerable to attack. The very fact that those ports are open on the internet is another worry. Our firewall by default blocks everything incoming, and I have opened up ftp, which port forwards to a DMZ ftp server, and a PPTP server runs on the firewall, which then gives the VPN client access. That's it. I am still not sure why firewalls would have any ports open < 1024 with all the recent issues with virii. Also, CERT came out with an advisory for this issue on July 31. SysAdmins still didn't have enough time to patch their systems? Also, there are plenty of free penetration testing web sites out there. Try DSL Reports.

The fact that Microsoft has been chosen as a "preferred vendor" for homeland security, also scares the hell out of me. My guess is that virus writters are going to get smarter about writing these virii. For example, what if a virus was crafted to *change* information, rather than destroy it? The only thing worse than no information is bad information. Luckily the latest virus was more of an annoyance, but also proof that there are still a lot of people out there that should not be admining these machines, in an ever increasing hostile Internet.

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