The Blaster worm is eternal

Even though the Blaster worm first appeared more than two years ago, it is still viable and still threatens a lot of computers today.

The Blaster worm first appeared in the summer of 2003 and began to spread extremely quickly after its emergence. The worm exploited a vulnerability in Windows that Microsoft has since fixed. Blaster primarily threatened computers running Windows 2000 as well as Windows XP operating systems, and tried to infect as many PCs as possible on TCP port 135.

However, according to security experts, it is far from possible to talk about Blaster in the past tense. Microsoft's malware removal application removes an average of 500-800 Blaster worms from computers every day. According to Matthew Braverman, a specialist at Microsoft, the main reason for this is that there are still many computers that do not contain security updates or have not been properly disinfected. These computers keep the Blaster "alive" all the time.

Braverman said the number of infections on Windows XP SP2 operating systems is negligible. However, it’s surprising that Blaster can sometimes infect these computers even though SP2 already includes the appropriate security fixes. The specialist justified this by the fact that in some cases Blaster is able to spread in alternative ways, such as via email.

You can help protect against the Blaster worm by using antivirus software or by installing the hotfix that is included with Microsoft Security Bulletin MS03-039.