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Elsewhere on the Web • Global Slapper Center

A new worm dubbed Slapper was discovered in the wild infecting Linux machines via a flaw in OpenSSL libraries. According to antivirus vendor Kaspersky, Slapper "uses the source code spreading technology that was used in the notorious Morris Worm in 1988." The Morris Worm was the first of the so-called "blended threats", exploiting try_rsh, try_fingered, and try_sendmail on Unix servers.

According to antivirus and security provider F-Secure, "the Linux.Slapper worm was first seen on Friday the 13th. Since then it has infected thousands of web servers around the world and continues to spread. What sets it apart from other worms is its peer-to-peer networking capability, which the worm author may utilize to take over any or all of the infected servers. This was apparently designed to launch distributed denial-of-service attacks with the worm, but it also results in a situation where anybody can take over an infected machine and do practically anything with it."

F-Secure infiltrated the peer-to-peer network established by the slapper worm. F-Secure has created a Global Slapper Worm Information Center which includes a thorough description of of the worm as well as tracking numbers of infected systems.

For complete details on the Slapper worm and its tracking, please visit the F-Secure Global Slapper Worm Information Center.