Hackers hit Win2k with a vengeance

What happens when an operating system gets all the support yanked out from it? Every new vulnerability becomes a new playground...and that is exactly what's occurred with Windows 2000. The OS hasn't been in the 'unsupported' bin for very long at all, but that hasn't stopped hackers from implementing a new trojan targeted specifically at the unprotected machines.

The attacks began over the weekend, with an initial version of the trojan launching Saturday, and a second on Sunday. The bugs connect the computer to an IRC server after modifying security settings, leaving the machine open to hijacking. According to experts, the bug is modeled after a very old trojan called Mocbot.

Though the OS itself is now unsupported, the trojan will be caught by most patched systems that have a virus scanner on them, and so currently poses little threat. But since there won't be a patch to repair this vulnerability or anything coming after, the question becomes: is this just the first wave? Hackers like easy targets, but plentiful is also a key factor, leaving one to wonder why they would come out in such force against the aging OS. Perhaps people haven't been migrating off the system as fast as the industry thought, despite the lack of updates.

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