This was in an e-mail to me from Jerry Pournelle:

This story is developing, it is unknown of the impact yet. Here's what US-CERT (US Computer Emergency Response Team) says:

"US-CERT is aware of new activity affecting compromised web sites running Microsoft's Internet Information Server (IIS) 5 and possibly end-user systems that visit these sites. Compromised sites are appending JavaScript to the bottom of web pages. When executed, this JavaScript attempts to access a file hosted on another server. This file may contain malicious code that can affect the end-user's system. US-CERT is investigating the origin of the IIS 5 compromises and the impact of the code that is downloaded to end-user systems.

Web server administrators running IIS 5 should verify that there is no unusual JavaScript appended to the bottom of pages delivered by their web server.

This activity is another example of why end users must exercise caution when JavaScript is enabled in their web browser. Disabling JavaScript will prevent this activity from affecting an end-user's system, but may also degrade the appearance and functionality of some web sites that rely upon JavaScript. US-CERT recommends that end-users disable JavaScript unless it is absolutely necessary. Users should be aware that any web site, even those that may be trusted by the user, may be affected by this activity and thus contain potentially malicious code." (See http://www.uscert.gov/current/current_activity.html#iis5).

This one will need to be monitored. There is no protection against it yet.

More later...

Rick Hellewell, digitalchoke@digitalchoke.com