SOUTHFIELD – Computer Associates said it expects additional worms and variants aimed at Microsoft browsers will continue to emerge throughout August and urges corporate users to patch their systems with the Microsoft update for vulnerability MS05-039.
Corporate users are urged to take these steps to stay proactive against these threats:
Monitor network traffic for enhanced activity on TCP ports 139 and 445. It may be best to block all external access to these ports while working on patching your systems.
Update your antivirus with the latest virus signature files. You may want to set the update schedule to more frequent as updates are being issued at a higher rate during this alert period.
The current worms are not only targeting corporations, as consumers have also been affected and are being urged to:
Make sure their systems are up to date with the Microsoft patches by visiting the Windows Update page and following the steps required: To check out the latest updates, click on Microsoft.Com
Update their Antivirus software with the latest virus signature files to detect anything that may already be on their system.
Install Firewall software so that it can detect suspicious activity that may already occur on their PC.
In the case that you do not have antivirus or firewall software available to protect your PC, you can download a 30-day free trial at ca.com/consumer.
If your PC is already infected with one of these worms, your ability to update your system with the latest Microsoft security patches and antivirus solutions may be disabled. If that is the case, you will have to consult your antivirus vendor’s technical support in order to manually fix the damage done.
Technically-minded end users might try to fix the broken updates by checking the Hosts file and replacing it with the fresh one in order to gain access to software updates. The Hosts file contains the mappings of IP addresses to host names. Windows checks the Hosts file before it queries any DNS servers, which enables it to override addresses in the DNS. On Windows XP, 2000 and NT systems the hosts file is located at %System%driversetchosts. The worm modifies the %System%driversetchosts file in order to restrict access to the required sites.
To have the full protection of a computer system these days, the average user have to be more active and make sure they have applied the latest Microsoft security patches along with updating their Antivirus, Anti-Spyware and Firewall protection.
