Proof That AOL Sucks More Than Ever

Prolexic, a provider of security consulting products, has claimed that Deutsche Telecom, Wanadoo and AOL are Europe's top three internet providers for harboring infected PCs. The primary attack of choice in the beginning of 2005 was an advanced full connection based flood. This attack exposes the real IP address of the attacking zombie. Due to the sheer number of IP addresses that must be blacklisted to successfully defend against the attack, this places an overwhelming load on protection hardware. The findings were based on statistics taken from real DOS (Denial Of Service) attacks over the last six months. Globally, AOL was found to be the most infected service provider on the Internet!

To add insult to injury, the same day this news hit the net, a new AIM virus is announced to be circulating. It was contained within hours, according to experts. The worm started with a message that read “LOL LOOK AT HIM” and contained a contaminated link. In the past, worms that infected IM programs through a corrupted link also included a backdoor for malicious code to be installed on the user's PC. It is not yet known whether or not the infection achieved this. The worm is thought to be a variant of the Opanki virus that surfaced on the Internet last month. IM users are warned to be just as careful with links in chat programs as they are with e-mail attachments, as there has been an increase in IM worms.