Watch Out for “Zotob” on Your Computer

Korea Information Security Agency (KISA) announced on August 16 that variants of the “Zotob worm” were found overseas and are expected to arrive here soon.

The computer viruses are exploiting the vulnerability of Plug-and-Play, which allows Windows to detect automatically when a new hardware is connected to the Windows operating system.

KISA urged users to visit the security page of the Microsoft (www.microsoft.com/korea/technet/security/bulletin/MS05-039.mspx) for an update. If a computer gets infected, files like botzor.exe, csm.exe, HAHA.EXE, 2pac.txt are created, the computer are denied access to some virus vaccine sites, and a firewall function, a security function of Windows, is ceased.

Sang-Hoon Kim sanhkim@donga.com