Days after &to=http:// english.pravda.ru/science/19/94/379/12644_Runet.html ' target=_blank>Google Inc. took action to thwart the new Santy worm, security companies warned that variants have begun to spread using Google and other search engines.
The Santy &to=http:// english.pravda.ru/main/2001/08/07/11958.html ' target=_blank>worm surfaced a week ago as bulletin board Web sites found their pages erased and defaced by the worm's text. The worm, which spread by targeting pages that used vulnerable versions of PHP Bulletin Board software, used Google to locate those pages, says San Francisco Chronicle.
According to the Washington Times, a new Internet worm dubbed the Santy worm targets U.S. search engine Google and other search engines, p2pnet.net reported Tuesday.
Variants of Santy, which have made themselves evident when phpBB-powered bulletin board sites have their pages erased, are making the rounds using the &to=http:// english.pravda.ru/comp/2002/08/01/33620.html ' target=_blank>AOL and Yahoo search engines, according to security firms, and are still targeting Google as well, CNET said.
Santy.A was discovered by Helsinki, Finland-based F-secure last Tuesday, menacing tens of thousands of Web sites that used the popular program to create Internet forums. It raced through the wild, and in a few hours disabled and defaced nearly 40,000 sites leaving the message: "This site is defaced!!! NeverEverNoSanity."
As reported earlier on internetnews.com, the worm spread on its own and did not require user interaction. Instead, it searched for vulnerable forum sites through Google and used a remote exploit to gain access to them. Once it located a site, it defaced it and restarted the random scanning process for more hosts, reports InternetNews.
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