This article is more than 1 year old

Santy worm defaces thousands of sites

PHP exploit

A worm which attacks web servers running the popular phpBB discussion forum software to deface vulnerable systems spread widely across the net today.

The Santy worm searches for vulnerable forum sites using Google. When a suitable target is found, Santy uses a remote exploit to gain access and deface it before resuming its scanning activity. Content on defaced sites is replaced by the following text string.

"This site is defaced!!!" NeverEverNoSanity

Apart from defacing infected sites with this text, the worm has no payload. It will not infect PC used to view infected sites. F-Secure, the Finnish anti-virus firmm estimates there more than one million sites use the vulnerable phpBB software, of which tens of thousands have already been defaced. Users of phpBB are advised to update to version 2.0.11. ®

Related stories

Bofra exploit tied to 'massive botnet'
Son of Code Red is born
IIS worm made to packet Whitehouse.gov
Nokia prefers Python to Perl for smartphone scripting
Your Perl and PHP problems solved

More about

TIP US OFF

Send us news


Other stories you might like