August 2003
New variant of Msblast targets Romanian technical University for protest
A Romanian student modified the Msblast virus, specialists warn.
BitDefender antivirus specialists today detected a new variant of the Msblast virus, which targets the "Gh. Asachi Technical University" from Iasi, Romania. The new version turns up immediately after the US Federal Bureau of Investigation arrested and charged an 18-year-old under suspicion of creating a variant of the Blaster worm, on Friday.
"The new variant uses the same tricks as the first one, with the sole exception of the target - which is now a Romanian technical university - and of the strings inside the virus - now infighting a Professor from the university with unkind remarks", said Mihai Neagu. "We expect the effects of this new variant will not be such devastating as they were in the first case, as most of the users have probably already patched their systems by now", Mihai concluded.
The worm refers to a website labeled "Profesorofilia", which could belong to the virus writer.
"This is not verified information; yet, a banner on the site coincides with the name of the virus executable: "enbiei"", Mihai Neagu added.
BitDefender antidote is available for download for all infected users.
All Windows 2000 and XP users are urged to patch their systems from http://www.microsoft.com/downloads/search.aspx?displaylang=en.
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