Chinese government issues worldwide warning over Piloyd worm
Monday, November 23, 2009
A fast-spreading virus is evading network security software in China, and the government there has issued a rare public warning of the threat, according to tech website The Inquirer.
Nick Farrell, writing for the Inquirer, says that there are few details of Worm.Piloyd.B available, but the uncharacteristically proactive stance taken by the Chinese government suggests that the worm could be particularly difficult to defend against. The worm is said to infect .exe, .html, and .asp files, and uses some unknown means to block users attempting to recover the files. Farrell writes that the warning originally came from the National Computer Virus Emergency Response Center in Tianjin.
Farrell speculates that the worm is the precursor of a botnet, gaining access to vulnerable systems and downloading additional malicious software in order to turn infected machines into "zombies."
As yet, no comment has been forthcoming from U.S. computer security institutions and many of the top anti-virus software makers, which are perhaps taking the time to make a thorough study of the malware before issuing informational bulletins.
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