Step Aside Conficker, Neeris on the Loose

Now that we've all survived Conficker without a major incident -- yet -- there's now Neeris, which, apparently mimics Conficker. Neeris isn't exactly new. It's been around for four years, but a new variant has hit the cyberstreets in the past week.

Like Conficker, it exploits the MS08-067 flaw and can also be activated by AutoRun. And, like Conficker, patching the Microsoft flaw and disabling AutoRun can contain the bug. But, unlike Conficker, it has attacked far fewer victims, researchers say.

The original version of Neeris used a buffer overflow to take advantage of a now-patched Microsoft flaw in the Server Service.