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Press Release #44

Date : Feb 17, 2000
Tel. : 137-0150, 135-6253

Let's all struggle against computer terrorism!

On February 15, the President of the USA Bill Clinton convened a meeting of the largest Internet companies' computer security firms' managers to discuss possible ways of protecting the Internet from computer terrorists' attacks. The ground for the meeting were the hackings conducted last week that attacked such well-known American Internet servers as Yahoo!, eBay.com, Buy.com, Amazon.com, E*trade.com, and others. Experts estimate total $1,2 billion losses caused by the attacks. The FBI has already opened criminal cases against the hackers, and the USA government claimed all the measures to find and punish the criminals will be taken.

All the attacks were developed similarly - first hackers infected "neutral" computers with harmful programs (called "zombie-agents") and then gave them the command to act the way they were programmed. Thus, in the case with Yahoo! search servers, 50 different computers fired a "volley" of hundreds or even thousands of bogus inquiries per second that put Yahoo! computers out of action for 3 hours. In other cases usual spam was used as harmful means.

The investigation will make clear how zombie-agents were intruded. However, we know that both "hand" computer cracking and Trojan programs and computer viruses could be used. Computer Economics research company said world business losses caused by virus attacks for the year 1999 totalled some $12,1 billion.

The 50 computers revealed in the Yahoo! case are considered a small part of the whole total of computers prepared by the hackers beforehand. It is no doubt that the owners of the "zombied" computers knew nothing about such intrusions. It is already known that the "base" the hackers used was formed mainly from the USA university computers. Low protection level and weak information security systems on them indirectly helped the hackers to commit the crime.

The incident in the USA and similar in other countries show how security and health of every single computer are connected with security and health of local and global computer nets, such as the whole Internet web.

We consider it our duty to appeal to computer users with such a call "Keep your eyes open and do not let harmful programs penetrate into your computers!". DialogueScience, Inc, a having a ten year experience of creating world-class antivirus programs, recommend the following simple protection rules that will secure your computers against harmful intrusions.

  1. Check every new program/document received in a floppy dick, compact disk or attached to an e-mail letter with Doctor Web antivirus scanner. To make the check automatic use SpIDer Guard resident guard.
  2. Regularly update antivirus programs and virus bases. "Chernobyl" virus epidemic showed that only the computers not having antivirus programs installed or having very old (year-old!) versions became victims.
  3. To provide safe computer file system control (in particular, to detect the uninvited "guests" timely) use ADinf disk inspector.
Let's protect our computers from viruses, Trojan programs and other contagion!

DialogueScience Information Service
E-mail: antivir@DIALS.ru
http://www.antivir.ru

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