Sun, Jun 18, 2006 page12

• New Japanese computer virus takes the fun out of file sharing

  • AP
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  A computer virus that targets the popular file-sharing program Winny isn't the most destructive bug or even the most widespread. But it's the most talked about in Japan as it generates headline after headline, month after month.

  The malware, called "Antinny," finds random files on Winny users' PCs and makes them available on the file-sharing network. So far, the data leaked have been varied and plentiful: passwords for restricted areas at airports, police investigations, customer information, sales reports, staff lists.

  The constantly updated virus seems to have spared no one -- airlines, local police forces, mobile phone companies, the National Defense Agency. Even an antivirus software manufacturer has suffered.

  

  Mamoru Saito, right, of the Telecom Information Sharing and Analysis Center in Japan, explains to computers users in March what they can do to prevent a virus.

  PHOTO: AP

  "The virus has been quite effective in getting information off a user's computer and onto the Internet. The data is supposed to be secret, so people are quite sensitive about it," said Tsukuba University computer scientist Kazuhiko Kato.

  Compared to attacks on Microsoft Corp's Windows software, the scope of the Antinny outbreak is narrow. But the Winny mess has caused an enormous brouhaha in Japan.

  Antinny also may have the dubious distinction of being the first virus to exploit the nature of file-sharing itself -- in Japan, if not in the world, said Mamoru Saito of Telecom Information Sharing and Analysis Center (ISAC) Japan. Other viruses and spyware are often found on such networks, though none appears to take advantage of the underlying technology to spread personal data.

  And while Antinny's writers seem to be limiting themselves to Japanese file-sharing software for now, he said, the code theoretically could be modified to attack other file-sharing networks such as Gnutella and BitTorrent.

  The outbreak has triggered a broad damage-control effort by government and businesses. They have banned Winny from in-house computers and fired employees who use it on them. They've also demanded that staff not take work home and delete Winny from any home PCs used for work.

  "The most secure way to prevent the leakage of information is not to use Winny on your computer," Chief Cabinet Secretary Shinzo Abe, the government's top spokesman, told reporters.

  But the outbreak shows little sign of abating.

  "The problem has shown that many people just don't know how to use the Internet safely," said Takeshi Sato of the government's National Information Security Center.

  File-sharing programs like Winny are used to find and get files -- from music to video to documents -- from the computers of other people also using the software. The PC owner typically has control over what is made available by limiting sharing to a specific folder.

  The virus takes advantage of this culture to propagate itself by playing a "social" trick on users, said ISAC Japan's Saito.

  When the virus is activated on a computer, it first chooses a new name for itself by taking the names of other files users are likely to be searching for -- usually photos or music. The resulting new name becomes so long that, under normal Windows' settings, the three-letter file extension that indicates the type of file disappears from view, he said.

  Careless users who download the file will see only the name and think it is something they wanted -- say, a photo of a favorite movie star. They don't see that they are actually trying to open an application.

  When they do, the virus then looks on the computer for the Winny application, grabs random files off the hard drive and uses Winny to make those files -- and itself -- available for download on the network.

  And so the cycle repeats.

  New strains of Antinny appear all the time. Software maker Trend Micro listed 46 variations of the virus in its database as of mid-May. Trend itself lost sales data due to a Winny leak in 2005.

  "Just keeping your antivirus software up to date isn't enough, because the updates can't keep up with all the new strains of the virus," the government's Sato said.

  The government's concerns about Winny go beyond viruses. It's often used to share files -- and that often means illegally exchanging copyrighted materials.

  Winny was already on the government's radar screen in November 2004, when a user of the program was handed a three-year suspended sentence on charges of violating copyright laws.

  But now it is confidential data rather than hit songs that have Winny back in the spotlight.

  Japan Airlines, for example, discovered last December that an Antinny-infected computer owned by one of its co-pilots leaked passwords for restricted areas at 16 airports around Japan as well as Guam's international airport. The airline was forced to alert the airports to have passwords changed as a precaution.
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