Email Disruption

Very few users will have been immune to the wave of virus (actually ‘Worm’) emails that have been flooding the Internet this week. The main source is the Mydoom (officially called W32.Mydoom.B@mm) mass-mailing worm that arrives as an attachment with the file extension .bat, .cmd, .exe, .pif, .scr, or .zip.

When a computer is infected, the worm will set up a backdoor into the system, which can potentially allow an attacker to connect to the computer and use it as a proxy to gain access to its network resource and enable someone to download and execute files.

The Mydoom worm will perform a Denial of Service (DoS) against www.microsoft.com starting February 3, 2004 and other specific targets. While the worm will stop spreading on March 1, 2004, the backdoor component will continue to function after this date.

The main security companies have now issued a category 4 rating (5 is the highest threat) against a similar worm called W32.Novarg.A@mm, which has the same effects as the Mydoom and other Denial of Service targets.

We all recognise just how disruptive these incidents are when you have adequate and up-to-date virus software and firewalls, but the disruption for those without protection is far greater. Don’t be blind to these threats and let’s hope that will all the sophisticated tracking methods now available, the authorities will start to come down very hard on the instigators of these problems.