Zotob worm now targets Windows XP machines

Zotob worm now targets Windows XP machines

World’s largest software company and the maker of the most used Operating Systems in the World Microsoft has issued warnings that the recently discovered worm Zotob which wrecked havoc in the American corporate world has the potential to infect certain Windows XP machines. Microsoft has claimed that Windows XP with Service Pack 1 installed under certain circumstances can get infected by Zotob.

The company published a security advisory regarding this new updated security warning on their website. The company had already updated a patch for the Windows 2000 based systems before the worm caused global level problems for the users running this Operating System. The worm apparently affected popular brands like ABC, CNN, and The New York Times as they still run Windows 2000 Operating System and which were left unpatched.

The original statement from the company claimed that the worm infected only Windows 2000 machines. However, the updated news is that the company has spoken about one scenario that also exposes select Windows XP users. The vulnerable systems are those, which are running Windows XP with SP1 with file and printer sharing, and the Windows guest user account enabled.

Debby Fry Wilson, a director at Microsoft’s Security Response Center said in a statement: “This is a minor and narrow attack scenario. However, because Windows 2000 customers were attacked last week, we wanted to take the extra precaution of offering customers this clarifying information.” The good part is that the number of vulnerable system is pretty low considering the company has issued the Service Pack 2 for Windows XP quite some while ago.