A new worm...

[Richard King]

This one got me yesterday. My computer shut it self down twice yesterday until I did an auto update at Microsoft. This could be a very bad one and is the first time that I have ever experienced a worm or virus that I am aware of.

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A46233-2003Aug11.html

[Mark Holtz]

When I swung by work today to pick up my paycheck (I return tomorrow), I was told to get really really familiar with this virus because we've been getting a lot of calls.

:sigh: Why is it that whenever I take a weekend or two off, something goes boom.

[Richard King]

It took down a portion of Comcast cable's high speed services....
http://www.kingcountyjournal.com/sited/story/html/140099
The funny thing about this article is that when I landed there I was greeted by a banner ad at the top of the page advertising Comcast High Speed Internet Service. :D

[Jacob S]

My friend's computer that I am on now, it got infected but after doing multiple steps and downloads and so forth I finally got rid of the virus and prevented it from coming back. We even got new Norton Anti-Virus software put on the computer to prevent other problems in the future. My friend's computer uses XP but mine at the house uses Windows 98 in which is not affected. Only Windows 2000 and XP is affected by this worm.

It will restart your computer and will have a countdown timer from 60 seconds after it had been on for 5 minutes or less and does not give you a long enough time to download the patch and rid of the virus so you have to go in and change the settings for the Remote Call Procedure (RCP) Service so that you will not get disconnected from the internet and prevent the computer from shutting down.

http://securityresponse.symantec.com/avcenter/venc/data/w32.blaster.worm.html

That link above has all the information you need on fixing this. It worked for me after my friend had problems the past couple of days with his computer doing this and not a problem since.

[Richard King]

I got shut down twice. After the second time I was up long enough to download the patch from Microsoft. I then went into my task manager where I found MSBlaster.exe still running. I deleted it from the task manager then did a search for MSBlaster.exe on my cdrive. I found it and another related program and deleted both. I then deleted the same from my registry. All appears well at the moment.

[Chris Blount]

Are firewalls stopping this worm? I am behind a router/firewall with all of the necessary ports closed. I also have Norton Anti-Virus running with the latest virus definitions. So far, no problems.

[sampatterson]

MS Firewall on XP keeps the worm from getting in. My parents got it yesterday and I went and cleaned it (Symantec has a free cleaner download).

[CoriBright]

All hardware firewalls stopped it, most software firewalls stopped it. What really stopped it was the Critical Update issued by Microsoft on 16th July. No XP Home or Pro, 2000 Pro, 2000 Server or 2003 Server who had already installed the update was affected at all.

We had a couple of horrendous days on the Microsoft newsgroups where most of us MVPs were posting the solution eveyr few minutes as fokls didn't seem to be able to read! I did over 200 postings on Monday alone, I can't even remember how many on Tuesday. By Tuesday evening I was a clients' homes doing their fixes. Most of them with cable broadband had been connected up by the cable company who hadn't even bothered to activate or explain the necessity of a firewall!

There is apparently now a varient which may affect Win95, 98, 98se and ME PCs who were previously unaffected. Whether this DoS attack on the WindowsUpdate site will happen on the 16th is yet to be seen.

[Jacob S]

Tech TV's Leo Laporte said that any firewall will block this worm but there may be more to come just like this and that they could have done a lot more damage if they wanted to like destroying the hard drive and so forth.

[Mark Holtz]

All I know is that I may be miserable Saturday and Sunday. Hopefully, I have a second tech on standby to call in just in case I get swamped with calls.

[pez2002]

I got this worm And it happend twice Now im ok


I was ready to bring this computer back to dell

but its ok

And yes i do have comcast high speed internet :)
and never looked back