bet365 sends Avril Lavigne worm to punters

Online betting firm bet365 has apologised after sending out a copy of the Avril Lavigne worm to punters on its mailing list last night.

The embarrassing security breach occurred by accident during a process to decommission a Linux box formerly used by the company to run its mailing list.

In normal operation the box prevented external SMTP (mail) connections, according to techies at bet365's Stoke-on-Trent offices. However when this box was rebooted, a mistake in firewall rules meant external mail was let in.

Some external mail turned out to be copies of the Avril Lavigne worm (aka Avril, Naith or Lirva - AV vendors can't agree a name), sent to the mail server by subscribers to the list already infected with the bug. Because of the now, exposed insecure configuration of the mail server these infected emails subsequently propagated on the list.

Avril is pretty much your bog-standard Windows worm. It spreads mainly as an infectious attachment within emails and takes advantage of a year-old exploit in Outlook which permits its execution without a user double clicking on an infected attachment. It can also spread by IRC, ICQ, KaZaA, and open network shares

The worm tries to disable AV and security software and also attempts to email cached Windows dial-up networking passwords to its as-yet unknown creator.

Managed services firm MessageLabs reports capturing 11,165 copies of the virus so far, since first detecting it on Monday (January 6).

bet365 has an active customer base of 10,000 people. Figures for the number of people on the list, much less the numbers who received the Avril worm last night, are unclear. Techies prevented wider spread of the bug by pulling the plug on the insecure mail server before the mailout was completed.

The mail server has being taken completely offline and bet365 is going ahead with its plans to outsource its mailing lists.

"The irony is that it was the process of decommissioning that caused the problem," a systems admin for bet365 told us.

Although some people have complained to bet365 about receiving the virus, the company tells us no one has yet reported becoming infected as a result of its inadvertent viral mail-out.

bet365 apologises for ay inconvenience caused by the incident, which was confined to a problem with its mailing list.

The online bookies runs customer accounts through a completely separate system (running a different OS). These systems were untouched by the mailing list virus problem and bet365's confidential customer account records remain secure, the company assures us. ®

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External Links

Write up of the Avril Lavigne worm by Symantec and Sophos