06 Aug 2003
Autorooter Trojan reminds users to patch against critical Microsoft vulnerability, says Sophos
The discovery on 5 August of the Autorooter Trojan (also known
as Troj/Autoroot-A) acts
as a timely reminder to IT administrators to ensure their systems
are patched against the latest security vulnerabilities.
At the time of writing Sophos has received no reports from
customers affected by the Trojan horse, but strongly recommends
that users put in place a Microsoft patch against the vulnerability it exploits as
well as updating their anti-virus software.
Sophos issued detailed advice on the
vulnerability and how system administrators and home users could
protect against it on 31 July 2003.
"Currently we have no reports of this Trojan horse in the wild,"
said Graham Cluley, senior technology consultant for Sophos.
"However, it is important that users patch their systems now to
ensure a future worm exploiting the same vulnerability is not
successful."
Sophos recommends that every IT manager responsible for security
should consider subscribing to vulnerability mailing lists such as
that operated by Microsoft at www.microsoft.com/technet/security/bulletin/notify.asp.
Other vendors offer similar services.
About Sophos
More than 100 million users in 150 countries rely on Sophos as the best protection against complex threats and data loss. Sophos is committed to providing security and data protection solutions that are simple to manage, deploy and use and that deliver the industry's lowest total cost of ownership. Sophos offers award-winning encryption, endpoint security, web, email, and network access control solutions backed by SophosLabs - a global network of threat intelligence centers. With more than two decades of experience, Sophos is regarded as a leader in security and data protection by top analyst firms and has received many industry awards.
Sophos is headquartered in Boston, US and Oxford, UK. More information is available at www.sophos.com.