[photopress:panda_1.jpg,full,alignright]A tool designed by a Chinese hacker to destroy his own identity-stealing worm is nearly worthless, a security company has said. Symantec Corp obtained a copy of the utility and tested it against eight variants of the Fujacks worm, also known as Panda and Panda Burning Joss Sticks.
Zulfikar Ramzan, a senior principal researcher in Symantec’s security response group, said, ‘In our internal testing, the tool was generally ineffective. On three variants, it was completely ineffective, and on five, it left a lot of traces of the worm on the system. Those remnants, registry keys or files, may not actually do anything bad, but they make the system dirtier than it used to be.’
This is not really helpful. To remind you a little of the background; six weeks ago, Hubei province police arrested six people, including 25-year-old Li Jun, and charged them with creating and selling the worm, which stole game usernames and passwords. At the time, China’s state media reported that Li confessed to writing the worm, then selling it for approximately US$13,000.
After his arrest, police told Li to write a Panda removal tool, and said it would be unleashed after testing.
According to Symantec, Li’s tool displays a message when run; the message is both his apology and an explanation that he created the worm only for research purposes. And US$13,000 although not is not mentioned.
Source: Computer World
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