Netsky.x Lays Out Web Sites

Version X of the persistent Netsky worm was the first to put a DoS bull's-eye on nibis.de, medinfo.ufl.edu, and educa.ch, educational sites from Germany, the United States and Switzerland, respectively. Earlier Netsky worms took on peer-to-peer file sharing sites, such as kazaa.com.

The DoS attacks, which began today by Netsky.x-infected computers, and is to run through Friday, April 30, effectively shut down the German and U.S. sites, according to Ken Godskind, the vice president of AlertSite, a Boca Raton, Fla.-based Web monitoring firm.

"While the Swiss education server appears to be maintaining availability -- for now -- the other two sites are unavailable to all or most users," Godskind said early Wednesday morning in an e-mailed statement.

The Swiss site was holding up well under the attack, with availability at 80 to 90 percent, said Godskind, while the German site was available to only about 20 percent of those requesting it between 7 a.m. and 9 a.m. EDT. The American site, a server run by the University of Florida's College of Medicine, was offline completely.

By noon EDT, however, all three sites were up, although access remained spotty on both the German and American site.

Other variants released after Netsky.x -- including Netsky.y and Netsky.z -- also targeted the three sites for DoS attacks that could run as long as May 5.

The two most recent Netskys, however, dubbed Netsky.aa and Netsky.ab -- which appeared Monday and today, respectively, don't take aim at the educational sites. Instead, Netsky.ab tries to delete the entries of several variations of its rival, Bagle, from the Windows Registry.

*This story courtesy of Techweb.com.