RinBot Worm Attack - A Grudge Match With Symantec

A worm is getting an awful lot of attention for a piece of malware that several anti-virus vendors have rated as a 'low' threat. The Rinbot worm, which also is known as the Delbot worm, hit the computer network at the Turner Broadcasting System, a division of Time Warner and parent of CNN and CNNMoney.com, according to a company spokeswoman. A story on the CNN.com Web site said the network was hit on Thursday. It's not clear how much the worm impacted the network.

The worm, which is trying to build a botnet, also was getting quite a bit of play because it targets Symantec, a leading anti-virus software vendor. While the worm does exploit a vulnerability in Symantec client security, it also goes after Microsoft's Windows Server Service remote buffer overflow vulnerability and Microsoft's SQL Server user authentication remote buffer overflow vulnerability.

Paul Moriarty, director of Internet content security at TrendMicro, notes that all three vulnerabilities have been patched. The worm can only get a foothold in company networks or individual machines if they have not been updated.