Santy worm hits phpBB discussion boards

Santy worm hits phpBB discussion boards

Viruses and worms are known to affect computers. Desktop computers that you and me use to surf the Internet. Worst we have seen is them getting into your computer through advertisements and malicious code running on a website. However, a new trend seems to be emerging with Santy worm.

Santy, which first came into public view on December 20 uses Google to search for affected discussion forum running particular versions of phpBB and deface them leaving behind a message informing the visitors. It exploits a vulnerability in the freely available open source forum software. Google has as expected taken steps and stopped further spread of the virus by blocking infected sites.

Google Developers said this in a message to a popular anti-virus maker: “While a seven-hour response for something like this is not outrageous, we think we can and should do better. We will be reviewing our procedures to improve our response time in the future to similar problems”.

Newer versions of phpBB software are not affected by the worm and discussion forums running older versions are advised to upgrade to the latest versions.