As Goner Strikes, McAfee Enters Europe

McAfee game the new "Goner" worm its highest risk rating on the day it offered new security services in Europe.

by Michael Singer and Natasha Gray of internetnews.com [December 5, 2001]

A brand new worm slithering through the Web is getting passed by Microsoft Outlook home and businesses users and is so bad it has the potential of wiping out complete files.

Anti-virus experts at McAfee.com (NASDAQ:MCAF) identified the worm early Tuesday morning and have named it the Pentagone or "Goner" after its identification string W32/Goner@MM. The company assessed the virus as a HIGH risk, its most serious rating.

Compared to other well known computer infections such as NIMDA, Code Red, Melissa and ILOVEYOU, McAfee says this is pretty serious stuff. "To coin a phrase from Star Trek—this is certainly an attempt to bring down the shields," says McAfee Security Architect Sam Curry. "It has the potential to be as destructive as the others, but it's still too early in the game and we won't see the full impact of this worm for some time. Unlike the Anna Kournikova virus that did one thing, this one is a hybrid virus that does a few things like deleting firewall and anti-virus files.

Curry says that like many other e-mail-based infections, the worm is expected to spread further at the times when people are checking their e-mail—early in the morning, at lunch and when they get home from work.

This mass-mailing worm attempts to send itself using Microsoft Outlook to all entries found in the Outlook Address book. It can also use the instant messaging platform ICQ to spread as well. The worm arrives in an e-mail message contains the subject "Hi" with a short message in the body.

How are you ? When I saw this screen saver, I immediately thought about you I am in a harry, I promise you will love it!

Sunnyvale, Calif.-based McAfee's AVERT team says to the worm won't activate until you open the attachment:

GONE.SCR.

The payload, if activated, can delete files from users' computers. The "Goner" worm then e-mails itself to every e-mail address contained in the user's address book.

Running this attachment infects the local system and not the network. When run, the worm displays a message box entitled; "About" and after a short time another window entitled "Error" is displayed.

The worm then copies itself into SYSTEM32 in the %WinDir% folder and adds the following registry key in order to get started upon boot:

HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Microsoft\Windows\
CurrentVersion\Run\C:\%WINDIR%\SYSTEM32\gone.scr
=C:\%WINDIR%\SYSTEM32\gone.scr

The new "Goner" worm comes quickly on the heels of the recent "Badtrans" Internet worm variant.

Both viruses affect users of Microsoft Outlook, although the "Goner" worm appears to target various firewall and anti-virus files for deletion.

And because of the multi-layered aspects of the worm, Curry suspects that this is more the work of crackers than of regular hackers.

Meanwhile, branching out into European territory, McAfee.com announced the launch of localized versions of its security software for the United Kingdom and Germany with each website formatted in the country's native language.

"The issue of computer security has become a global concern," says Atri Chatterjee, vice-president, worldwide marketing, McAfee.com.

McAfee says that over 30 percent of its subscriber base comes from outside the US and the move will help the company expand into markets overseas.

"By localizing our services we will further expand our international user base by providing PC users around the world with powerful tools to protect their digital assets," Chatterjee continues.

The company sees Europe as a potentially lucrative market for its Web-based security services as research undertaken by McAfee in conjunction with BT Homecare, found that only 35 percent of UK computer users adequately protect their systems against cyber crimes.

Internet intelligence firm NetValue says that Germany ranks number two in Europe terms of on-line banking usage and also boasts a high broadband penetration.

Both the British and German sites offer a managed set of Web-based security services for European consumers and small businesses.

VirusScan Online, McAfee's Web service that delivers managed virus protection and McAfee.com Personal Firewall that monitors networking activity and filters information exchanged between a PC and the Internet, are the first services to be offered to the two markets.

— End