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Sobers Stay Sober…No Buzzing Yet
John Stith
Staff Writer
2006-01-06
 Insider Reports RSS Feed
A Sober worm, scheduled to wreak havoc at 12:00 am GMT on January 6, 2006 appears to have been nipped in the bud. Various security software companies have kept watches on the sites tied to the worm for download and nothing seems to be spewing so far.
The variant called Sober.Y originated in Germany and was tied to January 5th, the anniversary of the Nazi party. Sobers have been floating around since October of 2003 and variants have launched dozens of times. They're often tied to important dates in Germany, most recently to the November 22nd inauguration of Germany's first female chancellor.
From all reports though, companies have been prepared for the virus and took appropriate precautions to block the effects even though millions of the worms were circulated throughout the world.
The worm itself wasn't designed to really screw up computers as some in the past have done nicely; it's designed to send out spam and lots of it. Spam is still a solid form of attack and more often; it's being used to raid information from PCs to make money more than wreck the PC itself. Before, hackers were destructive, now they're greedy.
This is, most likely, the direction of the future for malware. As with so many other enterprises, when profitably is realized, it stabilizes and becomes even more profitable as it becomes organized and structured. It's more business like in its outlook and approach. That's the way hacking and cybercrime is now. It's a big "for profit" industry and while efforts are made to stop it, there's no real concern because most believe these cybercrimes are mostly victim less.
About the Author:
John is a staff writer for SecurityProNews covering cyber security.
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