Another factor that potentially makes this virus noteworthy is it's self defense mechanism. It closes windows if the caption has any of the following strings in it. SYMANTEC,
SCAN, KASPERSKY, VIRUS, MCAFEE, TREND MICRO, NORTON, REMOVAL,
or FIX. So many antivirus programs, scanners etc... can not be
updated or used on a system that is infected with cme-24.
Q. You refer to this virus/worm as CME-24 -- that's not what *my* antivirus vendor calls it. What other names does CME-24 use?
A. Vendor Malware Name
Authentium W32/Kapser.A@mm
AntiVir Worm/KillAV.GR
Avast! Win32:VB-CD [Wrm]
AVG Worm/Generic.FX
BitDefender Win32.Worm.P2P.ABM
ClamAV Worm.VB-8
Command W32/Kapser.A@mm (exact)
Dr Web Win32.HLLM.Generic.391
eSafe Win32.VB.bi
eTrust-INO Win32/Blackmal.F!Worm
eTrust-VET Win32/Blackmal.F
Ewido Worm.VB.bi
F-Prot W32/Kapser.A@mm (exact)
F-Secure Email-Worm.Win32.Nyxem.e
Fortinet W32/Grew.A!wm
Ikarus Email-Worm.Win32.VB.BI
Kaspersky Email-Worm.Win32.Nyxem.e
McAfee W32/MyWife.d@MM
Nod32 Win32/VB.NEI worm
Norman W32/Small.KI (W32/Small.KI@mm)
Panda W32/Tearec.A.worm (W32/MyWife.E.Worm)
QuickHeal I-Worm.Nyxem.e
Sophos W32/Nyxem-D
Symantec W32.Blackmal.E@mm
Trend Micro WORM_GREW.A (Worm_BLUEWORM.E)
VBA32 Email-Worm.Win32.VB.b
VirusBuster Worm.P2P.VB.CIL
(source: AV-Test.org)
Q. What is CME?
A. http://cme.mitre.org/ CME provides single, common identifiers to new virus threats to reduce public confusions during malware outbreaks. CME is not an attempt to solve the challenges involved with naming schemes for viruses and other forms of malware, but instead aims to facilitate the adoption of a shared, neutral indexing capability for malware.
Q. How do people get infected with CME-24?
A. Known methods for infection include infected email attachments and network shares, however other mechanisms are also possible.
While some areas of the world appear to be more prone toward infection
than others, it appears that infected systems may be found in virtually
all countries.
Q. What should I do to protect myself from getting infected with CME-24?
A. There is a number of things you can do:
Email attachments can contain viruses
If your Internet Service Provider provides an email scanning service subscribe to it.
Do not open attachments without first verifying that a trusted sender intentionally sent it to you by asking them if they sent you an attachment.
Scan email attachments before opening them.
Do not open emails that claim to have naughty content. This is a common trick used by email based viruses.
Backup your system!
You should be routinely making backups of your system. If you've been putting it off, do it now. Backups will be a foundation that will help you recover if your system does get infected. Backups are the most reliable way to recover your data in the event of any data corruption event, virus, malware, or hardware failure.
Note that your backup should be taken to non-rewritable media and/or stored offline. If you do not make your backup to non-rewritable or offline media, depending on the format you use; your backups might be at risk from the malware's destructive payload. This is particularly true if you currently backup important files into a zipped archive, use mirrored hard drives, or file shares none of those will protect you from the destructive potential of this worm.
On new systems create recovery CDs. Many systems sold today do not come with recovery CDs. The person purchasing the system is expected to create them. Consult manufactures documentation for details.
Insure that you have antivirus software installed, and that you have up-to-date antivirus definitions covering this particular malware. Do a full system scan and confirm that you are not infected with CME-24 or other malware. If you are infected, seek professional assistance to fix the problem at once.
Do not unnecessarily share or mount shareable filesystems. Filesystems should never be made available via weak or non-existant passwords.
Q. Help, I think I have been infected with CME-24. What should I do now?
A. If you have anti-virus software installed verify that it is up to date. Check with your anti-virus vendor if you are unsure of how to do this. If you had anti-virus software that you believe was disabled by CME-24 you may have to uninstall it before re-installing it.
If you do not have anti-virus software installed there are several
anti-virus products that offer free or trial tools.
Av-test.org maintains a list of antivirus products.
< http://www.av-test.org/sites/lin ... extra=viren&sort=1>
and West Coast labs at
<http://www.westcoastlabs.org/cm-av-list.asp?Cat_ID=2>
and ICSA
<https://www.icsalabs.com/icsa/product.php?tid=dfgdf$gdhkkjk-kkkk>.
Some of these vendors offer free online scans as well. Be aware online scanners usually require activex or java be enabled, may take a long time and probably require admin privileges. Online scanners also do not provide any long term protection against reinfection
If you've already been infected, you should seek professional help to deal with that infection at once. Failure to deal with this malware prior to the 3rd day of the month can result in data loss.
Q. Some very important file was trashed by the worm. I really need to get the information that was in that file. I don't have a clean backup. What can I do? Can I get back at least part of that file?
A. Possibly, some file recovery tools might recover all or part of the missing data. A data recovery service may be your be able to assist.
Q. Why would someone do something so tremendously stupid and destructive?
A. Unless the author comes out and tells us we may never know why.
Q. I run Windows Media Center Edition, Mac OS X, Linux, have a Treo, etc. Is my system at risk? Or is this just a Windows XP thing?
A. This virus only affects Windows operating systems. It affects nearly every version of windows.
From: <http://www.microsoft.com/securit ... ife.E@mm&view=en-us>
Windows NT 3.x/4.0, 95, 2000, XP, Server 2003, ME and 98 are all potentially affected.
NETWORK ADMINISTRATORS PORTION
Q. I'm a mail server administrator. How can I protect my customers
from CME-24 and other malware?
A. There are several things you may want to do:
You may want to run a server-side antivirus program, or software to strip or defang potentially dangerous attachments. Under Unix, ClamAV > is one example of a free antivirus program that you can run on your mail server; Procmail Email Sanitizer <http://www.impsec.org/email-tools/procmail-security.html>
is an example of a program that you can run to remove or defang potentially hostile attachments. Under Windows there are several email scanning antivirus programs available.
You should also endeavor to accept, process and resolve notifications
you may receive about infected customers. Confirm that you have a
working abuse@ address, a working postmaster@ address, and current
whois contact information for your domain(s). See <http://www.faqs.org/rfcs/rfc2142.html> for clarification.
If you have netblock(s) that have been assigned to you via SWIP or whois, or an autonomous system number (ASN), please make sure that you have current abuse reporting contact information defined in whois for those resources as well.
If you operate an intrusion detection system, consider running
the Bleeding Snort rules that may help you to identify potentially
infected customers.
<http://www.bleedingsnort.com/cgi ... S/WORM_Nyxem#rev1.6>
Educate your customers about security effective practices.
Site license an antivirus product and distribute it to your customers.
Encourage customers to routinely apply patches.
Encourage customers to use a software and/or hardware firewall.
Encourage customers to routinely backup their systems.
Where terms of service and applicable law permits, scan customer systems for vulnerabilities and insure that customers get fixed or removed from the network.
This document was prepared by the TISF BlackWorm task force which includes many elements in the security communities including: anti spam groups, CERTs, anti-virus teams, academia, law enforcement, and ISP's.
The TISF BlackWorm task force would like to thank all the contributors to this FAQ including: Members of the DA/MWP groups and The Internet Storm Center handlers.
Original can be found at:
<http://isc.sans.org/blackworm>
