The Monocultures Bites Us Again!

Dave G. | May 24th, 2006 | Filed Under: Slashdot Rounddown

The standards blog has a quick piece on how the latest word 0 day is ‘Dan’s [time] bomb Goes Off.

As it happens, Dan’s bomb went off a few days ago, with the breakout of the “Backdoor.Ginwui” virus, a malicious bit of code that Symantec introduced in an alert as follows:

It has been reported that Backdoor.Ginwui may be dropped by a malicious Word document exploiting an undocumented vulnerability in Microsoft Word. This malicious Word document is currently detected as Trojan.Mdropper.H.

Well, lets see what Symantec has to say about Trojan.Mdropper.H:

Threat Assessment

Wild

Number of infections: 0 - 49
Number of sites: 0 - 2
Geographical distribution: Low
Threat containment: Easy
Removal: Easy

Threat Metrics

Wild: Low
Damage: Low
Distribution: Low

Methinks this isn’t the best example of the effects of a monoculture. At least not yet.