w32 Blaster Worm Removal
The W32 Blaster Worm was a virus released a few years ago that primarily hit Windows XP and below; fortunately, w32 Blaster worm removal software isn’t hard to find. The w32 Blaster worm was devastating because it devoured storage space by sending over a pile of useless data over the TCP ports in computers. This worm, while not particularly dangerous to your computer (it doesn’t wipe out your hard drive for example) was a nuisance because it could provoke sudden shut downs and of course killed your storage! The w32 Blaster worm has resurfaced and can attack Windows 7 computers, though cases aren’t as common as the XP virus.
History of the W32 Blast Worm
The blaster worm, also known as the Lovesan worm and MSBlast, was a worm designed to point out vulnerabilities in the buffer overflow system which had been discovered earlier. Although a patch was put out, it was unable to sufficiently stop this vulnerability. A programmer designed the worm which came in two versions: One would spam itself through a computer and leave the message
‘I just want to say I LOVE YOU SAN’ in the source code.
The second version of the virus held the message:
‘billy gates why do you make this possible ? Stop making money
and fix your software!!’
This of course was a direct message to Bill Gates, deriding his ability to make secure software. The man who designed this virus was arrested in 2003 and sentenced to eighteen months in prison.
The first appearance of the virus was detected August 11, 2003 and the peak infections occurred August 13, 2003. Thanks to quick public response and filtered ISPs, the worm quickly ‘died’ out, though it was geared to start a huge SYN flood on August 15, 2003.
The original worm was created by a team of Chinese cracking hackers called Xfocus which reverse engineered the patch which allowed for this buffer overflow. It was then modified by Jeffrey Lee Parsons who used it as a way to critique Gates’ ability to put out secure software. In both cases, the worm was mostly put out to show that there was vulnerability in the overflow buffer and it was too easy to flood a computer with information and cause it to crash.
Symptoms of the W32 Blaster Worm
The symptoms for this worm are pretty obvious: your computer will crash minutes after you boot it up, causing it to shut down again. The crash is caused by an overflow of information.
W32 Blaster Worm Removal
Fortunately, this virus ‘died’ almost ten years ago; however, if you own a computer that is vulnerable, you may become infected. This worm is fairly simple to squash with the right tools, but before you do that, do the following:
Go to Start->Run (or WinKey+R)
Type in Shutdown-a
Click on Ok or Enter.
This prevents your computer from shutting down half way through its treatment which would nullify the treatment!
Then you can grab the Microsoft patch which deals with the buffer overflow issue, download and run it. Restart your computer once the patch has done its job and run the blaster worm removal tool again to make sure your computer is squeaky clean.
Finally, download some anti-malware software and make sure the worm is dead by running it on your computer. This is done because the worm opens up vulnerabilities to other viruses and you want to make sure your computer is completely clean of anything bad.
Easy as can be! Keep in mind that the w32 blaster worm was meant primarily as a tool to show up the ‘big-wigs’ in Microsoft, not to screw with people’s information, so it’s relatively easy to get rid of once you know how to do it. W32 Blaster worm removal software can be found through Microsoft’s site and it’s easy to do, so good luck!
Related Articles: