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USB Worm Has Taste For Firefox, YouTube
David Utter
Staff Writer
2007-05-11
 Insider Reports RSS Feed
Even Google's Orkut social networking site gets some attention from a worm that spreads to machines from USB drives.
FaceTime's Chris Boyd, known to security pros as Paperghost, discussed a USB worm variant found by one of his fellow researchers. USB drives are the 21st Century equivalent of the floppy disk, and they are proving just as bothersome when it comes to spreading malware.
Boyd showed how the USB worm variant uses an autorun.inf file to spread onto a machine once the drive is connected. This variant puts up annoying messages when someone launches the Firefox browser, which the worm then closes.
Switching to Internet Explorer to connect to Orkut or YouTube brings up similar messages, which state the site has been banned. Boyd also noted how some of the files associated with this worm are designed to look like .exe files on the desktop.
"You'd be surprised how many people fall for that," he wrote.
IE Still Winning Browser War: I was recently asked about Firefox by a Mozilla spokesperson, for some simple opinions about it: what's good (security), what's bad (RAM/CPU usage sometimes), and how Firefox might erode some of IE's market share.
I suggested time travel to keep IBM from signing that double-edged deal with Microsoft, which placed DOS on IBM machines and allowed Microsoft to license it to other companies. Seeing the latest figures from Net Applications makes me think the DeLorean approach might be Mozilla's best bet.
IE has 78 percent market share by Net Applications' figures, followed by Firefox at 15.4 percent. Safari had 4.59 percent, followed by Netscape and Opera. The mobile browser, Opera Mini, also registered in the review, with no other mobile platform browser coming close. That was interesting to see.
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Tags: USB Worm, Browser, Market Share, Firefox, Opera
About the Author:
David Utter is a business and technology writer for SecurityProNews and WebProNews.
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