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Microsoft PowerShell targeted by worm

Wednesday 02 August 2006 02:07

Austrian virus writers have developed malicious code that targets Windows PowerShell, the new command line interface shell and scripting language being developed by Microsoft.

Internet security software firm McAfee has detected the MSH/Cibyz worm. MSH/Cibyz is designed to be spread using the Kazaa peer-to-peer file-sharing network, with the worm running in PowerShell.

PowerShell is due to ship later this year and will be used in products such as Exchange Server 2007.

The worm abuses PowerShell’s ability to execute scripts, by attempting to trick users into downloading and running malicious code.

To do this, it uses a series of product names that may be attractive to Kazaa users.

When run, the worm will overwrite some file types, change registry details and place itself in the machine's Kazaa shared folder, where it can be further spread to other users.

McAfee warned users to be cautious about what files they allow onto their machines from file-sharing networks.

 

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