Santy Internet Worm Attacks Thousands Of Web Bulletin Boards
Anti-virus experts at Sophos have advised that a new internet worm is defacing web bulletin boards across the globe. The Perl/Santy-A worm (also known as Santy) exploits a vulnerability in a piece of software often used to provide discussion forums and bulletin boards on the web, phpBB. The worm uses the Google search engine to try and find vulnerable bulletin boards on the web. According to media reports, Google has started blocking the worm’s attempts to replicate.
The Santy worm, which is written in Perl, spreads to vulnerable phpBB bulletin boards on both Windows-based and Unix-based platforms. Once the worm has spread to three or more servers it will attempt to overwrite all HTM*, PHP*, ASP*, SHTM*, JSP* and PHTM* files with a web page containing the following message:
This site is defaced!!!
NeverEverNoSanity WebWorm generation #
where # is a number which increases by one on each iteration of the worm.
“The good news is that this worm only affects web servers, not users who visit any of these bulletin boards,” said Graham Cluley, senior technology consultant for Sophos. “There have been serious security vulnerabilities found in the phpBB software in the past – and this incident underlines the importance of all people keeping up-to-date with the latest security patches and fixes.”
With the Santy worm released on 21 December, Sophos experts are theorising that it is possible the worm’s distribution has been deliberately timed to coincide with the holiday season.
“Can it really be coincidence that a worm which attacks web bulletin boards is released just as many companies and organisations who run such messageboards are shutting down for Christmas?” said Cluley. “Many webmasters will be going home early for the holidays – and it’s likely this worm will have a greater impact simply because the people who need to be at their desks to fix the problem, are relaxing in front of the fire.”
Webmasters who run the phpBB software are advised to upgrade to the most recent version of the software at the earliest possible opportunity.
“With millions of websites around the world running the phpBB software it is essential that the message gets out to its users that they must take security seriously – and keep up-to-date with information about the latest discovered exploits,” continued Cluley.
In June 2004 another worm, W32/MyDoom-O, disrupted the Google search engine after it tried to use the popular website in an attempt to spread further.
Further information about the Santy worm can be found at: