Sasser Worm Crawling Through Europe, Asia, Halting Taiwan's ATMs; Malady Has Links To Netsky; New worm, possibly work of Russian hackers, exploits flaw in a Microsoft feature.(INTERNET & TECHNOLOGY)

Byline: DONNA HOWELL

A fast-spreading Internet worm is pounding out trouble. And it might be the work of the Russian hackers who in February let loose the big Netsky worm, security specialists say.

The Sasser worm took hold in Europe Friday, overwhelming corporate networks and closing bank branches. It slammed Asia, halting automated tellers and postal services in Taiwan. It may have stranded 300,000 Australian train travelers.

"Globally this has been a significant problem for businesses," said Bob Hansmann, a marketing director at Tokyo-based security firm Trend Micro. "Taiwan got hit very hard. Plenty of people don't realize ATM networks run on a variant of the desktop systems we use. Europe got hit hard. Though the U.S. seems to be lucking out. In North America infections are not as high."

Sasser spreads through a flaw in Microsoft's Windows operating system. Unpatched, unprotected systems can "catch" the worm, just by being connected to the Internet or an infected network.

But the worm does little other than consume network resources and crash some computers. "In an office with 100 computers where nothing was patched, if you got one infection you'd soon have 100 infections and it could make the network virtually unusable," said Alfred Huger, senior director of engineering in the labs of security firm Symantec. "In terms of spreading fast, it's not quite where Blaster was."

Last August's Blaster infected at least 1.4 million computers in its first four days, impacting productivity to the tune of $330 million.