Time Bomb Trojan?

[Zealing]

Just wanting some info and opinions on a recent problem an ex client of mine had. After we lost this client, all sorts of problems have been appearing on the system, including Nimda outbreaks not once, but twice, and also reports of the system being hacked and a trojan of some sort being planted on the system. According to the IT manager, the new replacement IT department managed to difuse the Timb Bomb just seconds before it was scheduled to go off! Furthermore, the trojan could have spread over the network and somehow infected other machines. Now what I want to know is how much truth, if any, is in these statements. I do admit that this info is from a third party, so might not be accurate, but it makes sense for the IT department to lie out of their a$$ to make themselves look good, when you consider everything has gone down hill since they took over our job. They are telling everyone the system will be down for at least a week. This comes a week after the first Nimda infection which saw the system down for about 5 days. All I am thinking is that these guys reckon the Mimda virus, which was scheduled to go off on the 16th of this month would destroy the data on the servers hard disks. Though this isn't the case when there is a 1 in 20 chance of it happening (Though this was later proved to be false as the code in Nimda is buggy anyway). Are there any such Trojans that Hackers would plant to carry out such tasks? And furthermore, how many of them have a count down sequence with which to difuse it? That I think is absolutely hillarious, and obviously taken from the latest Bruce Willis movie :P

[ad3p4]

I haven't had to deal personally with a Nimda infection, but an MCSE teacher of mine did.

It took him 10 hours to clean out and apply patches to 3 servers and 50 workstations with a team of 5 people. The infection kept coming back and they had to operate according to a specific roadmap to protect the network properly.

As for hacker tools, just take a look at SebSeven, NetBus, BO2K, etc. I'm sure anyone with basic scripting or programming knowledge could whip up something which could be executed at a precise time. Think back to the DDOS attacks on CNN, eBay and others which involved the coordination of hundreds if not thousands of computers to target specific sites at the same time

I have met very few people in IT who tried to pass themwelves off as more than they were. Show offs don't usually last very long in the presence of those who do their job well and keep themselves informed.

To think that an entire IT department could be made of such people boggles the mind

Trust the IT staff to do what it can to resolve the issue and get the systems operating at peak efficiency again. They are there to help you do your job better and faster.

You mention them "taking over"? Were you replaced by outside consultants? That might put a different spin on things...

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"Expect the unexpected"
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