A new variant of Nirbot is exploiting the recently disclosed vulnerability in the Microsoft Windows DNS service.

Nirbot is a typical botworm that gives an attacker full control over an infected computer via an Internet Relay Chat channel, McAfee said.

“An attacker can gain control over the compromised computer and use it to send spam, install adware or launch a DDoS (distributed denial-of-service) attack on Internet systems,” according to McAfee’s description of the pest. There are multiple versions of the Nirbot family, which is also known as Rinbot.

The worm is rapidly infecting machines that are unpatched and this highlights the importance of keeping your machine updated with all patches.

Windows users must download all updates Microsoft releases, quickly as possible because the new trend is for attackers to take apart the patches as soon as they’re released to begin exploiting the holes on unpatched machines. In some cases they’re even writing exploits for holes before the patches are released. Waiting to see if the patch causes problem is just too dangerous now.

[Worm exploits Windows DNS hole]

[tags]DNS, exploit, Windows, Microsoft, Microsoft Windows, Microsoft Update, Security, worm, nirbot, ddos, mcafee[/tags]