Emergency Warning against Another Internet Crisis

The Ministry of Information and Communication (MIC) proclaimed an emergency warning on Feb. 6, saying that Trojan horse, a malignant computer virus, has been spreading to the PCs at homes and universities in the nation.

The ministry said that the joint investigators have found one or two Trojan horses in nearly all the PCs during the probe on the cause of the Internet breakdown on Jan. 25, suggesting that the spread of the virus has reached the risk level.

Trojan horse is a virus that disguises as a normal program to penetrate other computers. The virus is very likely to be used in attacking network because a third party can control the computers from outside.

“If a malicious attacker controls the virus that has already penetrated the local PCs to break down a particular system, another Internet crisis may happen again,” said the MIC.

“The situation is even more serious because the recent Trojan horse automatically spreads combining with worm viruses while the existing one had no ability to duplicate,” said Cha Yang-sin, director of the Information Protective Planning Division of the MIC.

The ministry warned that if there is a Netspree Trojan horse in a PC, the infected computer can be used in the Distribute Denial of Service (DDoS) against other systems without the user knowing it and Badtrans Trojan horse discloses the credit card number and the password that the user entered during on-line shopping.

The MIC said that in order not to be infected by the virus, users must install the latest vaccine, check up their PCs on a regular basis, and set up a password in the booting screen and the window system.

“It is difficult for the general public to check up their computers manually since there are various kinds of Trojan horse. So they must install the latest vaccine to check whether the virus has penetrated the PC and to get rid of it,” the ministry stressed.

Ahnlab. Inc. (www.ahnlab.com), Hauri (www.hauri.co.kr), the Ministry of Information and Communication (www.mic.go.kr), and the Korea Information Security Agency (www.kisa.or.kr) provide access to the detailed information on Trojan horse and the correct use of vaccine.

The Ministry of Information and Communication decided to designate a week from Feb.7 as a period to clean up Trojan horse and start a national campaign to get rid of the virus with a local vaccine company.

In the meantime, Microsoft Korea said on Feb.6 that it offered a security patch due to the security vulnerability of Explorer, the MS Internet browser.

The security vulnerability found on the day is a failure that allows malicious web masters access to the limited sites to steal personal information if they exploit the domain security function of Explorer.

Microsoft Korea (www.microsoft.com/korea/technet/security/current.asp) has offered the security patch through the Internet to fix the vulnerability.

Jong sik Kong kong@donga.com