Wyse Thin Client Customers Focus Resources on Protecting Centralized Networks and Servers, Rather Than Thousands of Desktop Devices Wyse Technology, the domain experts in server-centric computing (SCC), locally represented by IT WISE, announced that companies using Wyse`s industry leading Winterm 1000 and 3000 series thin clients are being protected from the MyDoom worm. Wyse thin clients are currently defending thousands of enterprises and hundreds of thousands of unsuspecting users from this malicious outbreak. A variant of the worm call MyDoom.b is now making its way across the Internet, and could potentially be worse than the first outbreak. The two variants of the worm are taking over computers worldwide and lay in wait for planned distributed denial-of-service (DDoS) attacks that target either the Web site of the SCO Group Inc. or Microsoft`s web site. Because Wyse Winterm thin clients access applications on a central server, the MyDoom worm has no personal computer to abuse as part of a DDoS attack. Additionally, the worm is unable to do any damage to desktop systems, because the worm never actually reaches the computer.
"Imagine an organisation with 10,000 personal computers. If only 10 percent of those computers become infected, that`s 1,000 desktops that have to be fixed or cleaned. Today`s unrelenting security threats are forcing enterprises to seriously reconsider current standards for protection and eliminating legacy desktop PCs altogether as a vulnerability point," Arno`t van Heerden, Sales Director of local distributor, IT WISE. "Security protection is a major benefit Wyse thin clients provide over other PC alternatives, such as legacy and blade PCs. Over the past few years, companies have implemented Wyse thin clients because they recognise the cost savings, both short and long term, inherent in our products, and the commitment Wyse has made to provide enhanced secure access solutions for server-centric computing environments."
Initially discovered on Monday January 26, 2004, the original MyDoom worm has left organisations worldwide facing millions of dollars in damages and lost productivity. MyDoom, also known as Novarg and Mimail.R, spreads via e-mail and by copying itself to any available shared directories used by Kazaa. It harvests addresses from infected machines, and uses words like `test`, `hi` and `hello` in the subject line. For unsuspecting users, the e-mail appears as a sent e-mail that has been bounced back and waits in their in-box until it is let loose. A backdoor Trojan has also been discovered in infected computers, allowing the author to delete, copy or damage files. Finally, it has been predicted that the worm is geared to launch a denial-of-service attack against SCO.com, which has been hypothesized to be an ID tag left behind by the creator. With the worm three days into the attack, just now starting to slow its pace, damages have been estimated to be $250 million, five times the amount for this past summer`s SoBig-F virus.
The new era of enterprise attacks in 2003 has not abated in 2004. The SoBig-F and MSBlast (Blaster) viruses forced all companies to rethink their current approaches to security. Anti-virus software and firewall packages are useful, but may no longer be sufficient in protecting enterprises against crippling attacks on personal computers. However, Wyse Winterm thin clients can eliminate these malicious threats. In a thin-client computing environment, worms and viruses can be kept away from desktop devices, thus preventing damage and propagation at the desktop level. In turn, desktops cannot be manipulated by worms and used to launch distributed denial-of-service attacks. IT managers can focus on protecting a few servers, rather than thousands of desktops.
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