MyDoom worm (2/1/04)

MyDoom worm spreading rapidly
Posted February 1, 2004

On Sunday Feburary 1 the MyDoom.B worm crippled the Utah-based software firm SCO. According to the Emergency Email and Wireless Network, the Department of Homeland Security warns:

"Mydoom.B is a new variant of the Mydoom worm ... [that] attempts to perform a Distributed Denial of Service (DDoS) attack against Microsoft.com. Details regarding this new worm are still emerging, but it has been validated as spreading in the wild ... To spread over the KaZaA P2P network, Mydoom.B creates copies of itself in the KaZaA shared directory with randomized filenames."

As always, Help Desk advises all users to have installed recent versions of anti-viral software and keep their definitions up to date. Do NOT open attachments sent to you, even from friendly email addresses, unless you can verify that the sender specifically meant to send the attachment to you. Even then you are at risk. This is not the only nasty critter out there, and there are likely to be more virulent strains soon. And more after that. "Let's be careful out there," as Sgt. Phil Esterhaus used to say.

For more information visit the Emergency Email and Wireless Network site.