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Our top vulnerability this week is a worm that performs a grab bag of techniques to infect computers. Find out how it does what it does in our Top Vulnerability section.
Its a low-key week for threats, so this week were giving you a list of the 12 Most Common Hoaxes as identified by Panda Software. Have you fallen for any of these?
Top 5 Vulnerabilities
Our top phish is a pretty conventional banking account information phish, but its interesting in that its not for Faceless National Bank, but for one of the smaller, regional banks. See which one in the Top Phish section.
Setting up a new computer? Stop! Before you put it on the Internet, read our Security Tip section.
A cross-browser vulnerability was announced this past week that affected every well-known browser out there. Read the details in our Security Alerts and Updates section.
A SYN flood is the most common form of denial-of-service attack. Read how it works in the Jargon Watch section.
Top Threat: Maslan
Executive Summary
Name: WORM_MASLAN.A (TrendMicro)
Affects: Windows XP/2000/NT/ME/98/95
What it does: Three variants of Maslan, Maslan.A, .B and .C, have been identified by various vendors, and they differ only in details, such as the names of the files they install on the system. The important behaviors are consistent across variants.
It arrives sometimes as a conventional mail worm, with an executable attachment. This worm has gotten attention recently for using the file name PlayGirls2.exe. This file is 54272 Bytes in size.
The worm also can spread through network protocol vulnerabilities, although there is some confusion among the anti-virus vendors over exactly which vulnerabilities it exploits.