One of Santa

A few days ago, I saw a News.com story that really put me in the spirit of Christmas: “Dasher worm gallops onto the Net.”

Dasher.B is a Windows-targeted worm that drops spying software on vulnerable PCs, and it’s spreading across the Internet. According to the story, “The Dasher.B worm exploits a flaw in Microsoft Windows Distributed Transaction Coordinator, or MDTC.” The infected systems are prompted to connect to a remote computer for instructions, and then the worm downloads a malicious program that tracks keystrokes.

Do you think the name of this worm, considering it’s almost Christmas, is a coincidence? I think not! What about the “I love you” worm that plagued people’s Inboxes suspiciously close to Valentine’s Day? If I were you, I’d keep my eyes open for the following worms: Dancer, Prancer, Vixen, Comet, Cupid, Donner, Blitzen, and Rudolph!