Early bird avoids the worm

[InfoSec News <isn () c4i org>]

Forwarded from: William Knowles <wk () c4i org>

http://www.fcw.com/fcw/articles/2003/0811/web-worm-08-12-03.asp

By Diane Frank 
Aug. 12, 2003

The Internet worm affecting computers nationwide today has had very 
little impact on federal agencies because most of them applied the 
patch for the vulnerability last month when the Homeland Security 
Department's National Cyber Security Division first issued the alert, 
officials said.

The Blaster worm, also known as Lovesan, has been spreading rapidly 
this week. It takes advantage of a vulnerability in Microsoft Corp.'s 
Windows operating system that was discovered in July. The 
cybersecurity division, through the Federal Computer Incident Response 
Center (FedCIRC), warned of the vulnerability July 17 and provided 
information on Microsoft's patch for it.

"Our patch rates were quite good, as evidenced by the fact that today 
we've had only sporadic reports of impact at federal agencies," said 
David Wray, a spokesman for the department. "We appear to have done 
our job."

FedCIRC, which has long pushed to get agency officials to report on 
the application of patches, has a patch evaluation and dissemination 
service that lets federal systems administrators get information only 
on patches that are relevant to their networks. That effort appears to 
be paying off, Wray said.

The cybersecurity division includes the staff and responsibilities of 
the National Infrastructure Protection Center, and is responsible for 
information security analysis of federal agencies and the critical 
infrastructure of the entire country. The private sector, such as the 
Internet service providers, oversees much of that infrastructure, but 
the division keeps in close contact with those companies to monitor 
the worm, Wray said. 



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