Two Trojan Horses Enter The Court in Minnesota

The computer network of Minnesota Judicial Branch was hit by two Trojan horses this weekend, resulting in shutting down the systems used for case management.

The trojans walloped late afternoon on the 26 January 2007. Kyle Christopherson - the spokesman for state court - said that though the systems were brought back to work online before 10AM of the next day of the attack. However, officials were still working on to completely restore them.

Happily, the attack failed to compromise any secure information.

"A virus that was down all weekend caused the entire havoc. However, most systems were successfully backed up this morning", said the spokesman in a statement that was published by Twincities on 30 January 2007.

However, the Trojan horse had caused a temporary knock out of case-management system of 13 countries comprising Washington, Dakota, Anoka, and Ramsey. A registry of the actions for civil and criminal cases that are filed in Minnesota is maintained in this system.

The worms were identified as W32.Randex and W32.Gangbot.

W32.Gangbot was discovered by the writers of Symantec anti virus program on 22 January 2007. The Trojan horse was designed to create a backdoor in the infected PC, so that the scammer can find a way through it.

The other worm, W32.Randex, was first hit upon in December 2003. This virus was designed to provide the remote hoaxer with unauthorized access to a compromised PC.

However, both viruses clone themselves through multiple ways comprising instant messenger & chat programs.

Christopherson went on to say that the judiciary wasn't aware of how the trojans broke in its network. The judiciary also didn't know why latest anti virus software wasn't used to keep the network secure from any kind of hoax. The makers of anti virus software typically announce flaws like a virus or a worm only if they're able to simultaneously provide software for blocking their way in.

The judicial branch of the state is working together with the software vendor to ensure that such incidence doesn't repeat in future.

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» SPAMfighter News - 2/2/2007