March 20, 2006 Bot Herders Ready Attack Against Message Forums By Gregg Keizer Courtesy of Botnet controllers may be planning a large-scale attack against message forums, TechWeb has learned. The SANS Institute's Internet Storm Center (ISC) noted that a going by the name "FuntKlakow" has registered on thousands of forums. Speculating, ISC analyst Marcus Sachs noted that the bot's owner(s) may be preparing to a zero-day against the popular bulletin board software. "We might be chasing a ghost here but it's always good to be on the lookout for something like this," wrote Sachs in an alert on the ISC site Sunday. Sachs linked to the about the attack possibility. That posting added that on most boards the FuntKlakow bot had only registered, but that it was capable of posting messages. A suggested that the bot may have created accounts on more than 36,000 forums. Some of the forums show messages such as "Oh, how nice" and "Wow, I didn't think of that." "Next time the phpBB announces a critical vulnerability, the bot would have everything ready (just a post away) from attacking thousands of sites/forums," the original post read. U.K.-based security and measurement company Netcraft added in a Monday alert that the phpBB software has been hit with several security problems, including a January hack of Advanced Micro Devices' (AMD) php-driven support forums that planted malicious code on visitors' machines. E-mail This Story Print This Story Get the latest Messaging news, product info, and trends every week.			Spyware And Adware Continue To Plague PCs FTC Smacks Spammer With $900K Fine IM: Real-Time Securrity Problems For Financial Services Researchers Warn Of Coming Tax Scams Microsoft Vows To Keep Pressure On Phishers The High Cost Of Data Loss     Messaging Pipeline's Main RSS Feed     Messaging Pipeline's Blog RSS Feed Editorial and vendor perspectives The Six Flavors Of Windows Vista Microsoft plans to release a full six-pack of Vista versions, one for every taste. Which Vista will be right for you? Hope is Not Enough When It Comes To Compliance Three Ways To Authenticate E-Mail And Stop Spam Wikis In The Workplace Review: Google Desktop 3 Vendors are now talking about how collaboration can be improved by integrating video with messaging applications. They're even talking about adding live TV to mobile phones. How far do you go before it becomes a bandwidth and business productivity drain? Video is a great idea     13% Video is fine but there needs to be size limits     25% It's never used for anything really productive     38% I draw the line at live TV     25% In search of messaging products? Check out our brand new Product Finder for a directory of groupware and collaboration tools, security products, archiving solutions, and more.