symantecTM		Symantec AntiVirus Research Center   ISSN 1444-9994
	SARC Home Page			June 2001 Newsletter
		These are the most reported Viruses, Trojans and Worms to SARC's offices during the last month. Top Global Threats W95.Hybris W32.Magistr.24876@mm W95.MTX Wscript.KakWorm VBS.VBSWG2.X@mm W32.HLLW.Bymer W32.Badtrans.13312@mm JS.Seeker VBS.Haptime.A@mm Backdoor.SubSeven Asia Pacific W95.Hybris W95.MTX W32.Magistr.24876@mm Wscript.KakWorm W32.HLLW.Bymer VBS.VBSWG2.X@mm VBS.Whitehome.A W32.Badtrans.13312@mm W32.Blebla.B VBS.Haptime.A@mm Europe W95.Hybris W32.Magistr.24876@mm W95.MTX VBS.VBSWG2.X@mm Wscript.KakWorm W32.HLLW.Bymer W32.Badtrans.13312@mm JS.Seeker JS.StartPage VBS.Tam.A Japan W95.Hybris W95.MTX W32.HLLW.Bymer W32.Badtrans.13312@mm VBS.VBSWG2.X@mm W32.Magistr.24876@mm Backdoor.SubSeven O97M.Hopper.V X97M.Divi.D VBS.LoveLetter USA W95.Hybris Wscript.KakWorm W32.Magistr.24876@mm W32.Badtrans.13312@mm VBS.VBSWG2.X@mm W32.HLLW.Bymer W95.MTX Backdoor.SubSeven VBS.PassOn VBS.LoveLetter Top 20 Consolidated Global Threats By SecurityPortal W32.Magistr@mm VBS.VBSWG.X@mm W32.BadTrans.A@MM W32.Hybris VBS.VBSWG.Z@MM VBS.LoveLetter W32.Funlove W95.MTX VBS.KakWorm W32.Navidad VBS.Haptime@MM W97M.Ethan PWSteal.Trojan W32.HLLW.Bymer W97M.Marker W97M.Thurs.A BackDoor-G.ldr W95.CIH W95.Spaces W32.Kriz Removal Tools for... W32.HybrisF W32.Kriz W32.Navidad W32.HLLW.QAZ.A W95.MTX W32.FunLove.4099 Wscript.Kakworm Wscript.Kakworm.B Happy99.Worm VBS.Loveletter PrettyPark.Worm VBS.Stages.A W2K.Stream AOL.Trojan.32512 W95.CIH Worm.ExploreZip A list of Virus Hoaxes reported to Symantec SULFNBK.EXE Warning A list of Joke Programs reported to Symantec.			It's PGP's tenth anniversary, June 5th or 6th 1991 was when PGP 1.0 was first posted to the Internet. To mark this important point in Internet communications privacy I asked Philip Zimmermann, the author of PGP, to write an article about the history of PGP and the OpenPGP working group based at http://www.openpgp.org/. We had a surprisingly wide spread hoax this month with the SULFNBK.EXE hoax warning popping up very regularly in our virus analyses inboxes. There was a misguided attempt to use a worm to clean up vulnerable Linux systems and VBS.Haptime uses the stationary feature of Outlook Express, so I'd recommend turning this off. There's a new very useful page on the SARC web site this month, it is a full listing of the viruses detected in the latest certified virus definitions. It also carries listing from the previous couple of definition releases. David Banes. Editor, sarc@symantec.com
					Worms
					Linux.Cheese.Worm Minimal [1] Linux This worm attempts to spread itself to computers that have been compromised by Linux.Lion.Worm, and to remove the security hole that allowed the replication to occur. It is not considered harmful, but it is a misguided attempt to address a security issue. http://www.sarc.com/avcenter/venc/data/linux.cheese.worm.html by: Peter Ferrie SARC, APAC
					Viruses
					VBS.Haptime.A@mm Minimal [1] Script VBS.Haptime.A@mm is a Visual Basic Script (VBS) worm. It infects .htm, .html, .vbs, .asp, and .htt files. It replicates using MAPI objects to spread itself as an attachment. Also, the worm attaches itself to all outgoing messages using the Stationary feature of Outlook Express. http://www.symantec.com/avcenter/venc/data/vbs.haptime.a@mm.html by: Serghei Sevcenco SARC, APAC VBS.NoMercy.A Minimal [1] Script VBS.NoMercy.A is a Visual Basic script in an HTML file. The virus infects .html, .htm, .shtml, .stm, and .asp files. If the virus finds files to infect, it inserts its code at the beginning of the file. On the 13th or 30th of every month, the virus displays the message; God, why you did it to me http://www.sarc.com/avcenter/venc/data/vbs.nomercy.a.html By Kaoru Hayashi SARC, Japan
					Trojans
					Trojan.Eurosol Minimal [1] Win32 Trojan.Eurosol installs itself on an infected system so that it is run at startup. It does this by modifying the System.ini file and appending itself to the shell = Explorer.exe line in the [boot] section. It also creates a copy of itself in the \Windows folder as the system file NetBios32.exe. http://www.sarc.com/avcenter/venc/data/trojan.eurosol.html by: Brian Ewell SARC, USA
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					Today marks the 10th anniversary of the release of PGP 1.0.
					It was on this day in 1991 that I sent the first release of PGP to a couple of my friends for uploading to the Internet. First, I sent it to Allan Hoeltje, who posted it to Peacenet, an ISP that specialized in grassroots political organizations, mainly in the peace movement. Peacenet was accessible to political activists all over the world. Then, I uploaded it to Kelly Goen, who proceeded to upload it to a Usenet newsgroup that specialized in distributing source code. At my request, he marked the Usenet posting as "US only". Kelly also uploaded it to many BBS systems around the country. I don't recall if the postings to the Internet began on June 5th or 6th. It may be surprising to some that back in 1991, I did not yet know enough about Usenet newsgroups to realize that a "US only" tag was merely an advisory tag that had little real effect on how Usenet propagated newsgroup postings. I thought it actually controlled how Usenet routed the posting. But back then, I had no clue how to post anything on a newsgroup, and didn't even have a clear idea what a newsgroup was. It was a hard road to get to the release of PGP. I missed five mortgage payments developing the software in the first half of 1991. To add to the stress, a week before PGP's first release, I discovered the existence of another email encryption standard called Privacy Enhanced Mail (PEM), which was backed by several big companies, as well as RSA Data Security. I didn't like PEM's design, for several reasons. PEM used 56-bit DES to encrypt messages, which I did not regards as strong cryptography. Also, PEM absolutely required every message to be signed, and revealed the signature outside the encryption envelope, so that the message did not have to be decrypted to reveal who signed it. Nonetheless, I was distressed to learn of the existence of PEM only one week before PGP's release. How could I be so out of touch to fail to notice something as important as PEM? I guess I just had my head down too long, writing code. I fully expected PEM to crush PGP, and even briefly considered not releasing PGP, since it might be futile in the face of PEM and its powerful backers. But I decided to press ahead, since I had come this far already, and besides, I knew that my design was better aligned with protecting the privacy of users. After releasing PGP, I immediately diverted my attention back to consulting work, to try to get caught up on my mortgage payments. I thought I could just release PGP 1.0 for MSDOS, and leave it alone for awhile, and let people play with it. I thought I could get back to it later, at my leisure. Little did I realize what a feeding frenzy PGP would set off. Apparently, there was a lot of pent-up demand for a tool like this. Volunteers from around the world were clamoring to help me port it to other platforms, add enhancements, and generally promote it. I did have to go back to work on paying gigs, but PGP continued to demand my time, pulled along by public enthusiasm. I assembled a team of volunteer engineers from around the world. They ported PGP to almost every platform (except for the Mac, which turned out to be harder). They translated PGP into foreign languages. And I started designing the PGP trust model, which I did not have time to finish in the first release. Fifteen months later, in September 1992, we released PGP 2.0, for MSDOS, several flavors of Unix, Commodore Amiga, Atari, and maybe a few other platforms, and in about ten foreign languages. PGP 2.0 had the now-famous PGP trust model, essentially in its present form. It was shortly after PGP 2.0's release that US Customs took an interest in the case. Little did they realize that they would help propel PGP's popularity, helping to ignite a controversy that would eventually lead to the demise of the US export restrictions on strong cryptography. Today, PGP remains just about the only way anyone encrypts their email. And now there are a dozen companies developing products that use the OpenPGP standard, all members of the OpenPGP Alliance, at http://www.openpgp.org. What a decade it has been. - - -Philip Zimmermann 5 June 2001 Burlingame, California http://www.philzimmermann.com
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