Microsoft technology has not yet had a virus attack

An Australian virus programming team has just released a malware code that has been proven to be capable of attacking the upcoming Windows Powershell technology.

The MSH / Cibyz computer worm does not exploit any security flaws in Microsoft's scripting toolkit. MSH / Cibyz is quite similar to batch viruses programmed in Javascript or Visual Basic (VB) - computer worms often "guide" the system to install malware after the user has executed the code snippet.

Allysa Myers, a virus researcher at the company, told McAfee that the hidden meaning behind the malware story is that there is no safe file type. Always capable of exploiting a security error in any application software.

Powershell attack malware is a proof that the dangers that batch threats pose are increasing as businesses are currently unable to block Powershell scripts on their systems. The author of the malware will certainly feel intrigued by Microsoft's new set of tools as it brings them new challenges.

Windows Powershell is a command-line control tool that allows IT administrators to manage a system. This tool is quite similar to the command line control tool in Unix, Linux and OS X operating systems. It is expected that this tool will be released in the fourth quarter of this year.

PowerShell is expected to be released as an integrated part of the new Windows Vista operating system version. However, Microsoft has changed plans to launch this product with Exchange and Microsoft Operations Manager.

The tool was first attacked last summer when security firm F-Secure detected the Damon virus that also attacked the toolkit. F-Secure also mistakenly called it the first Windows Vista virus.

The Damon virus is also programmed by the authors themselves, so the Cibyz virus created it. Cibyz is probably just a new version of Damon with more advanced features. Notably, the Cibyz worm is capable of changing every time it infects a different file, making scanning and detecting it much more difficult. Most antivirus tools do not currently have this feature.

Microsoft has not commented on the above issue yet.

Hoang Dung