MyDoom-O searches for new targets

27 July 2004 18:18 GMT / By Kenneth Henry

It seemed like a only short time ago that we brought you news about MyDoom-N, but seems to be working its way through the alphabet. It took a different and nastier turn than its predecessor when it conspired to bring down sections of Google.co.uk and then Alta Vista, Yahoo and Lycos. If the search engine could be automated, MyDoom-N, launching from an attachment, could affect it and cause Server Error pages to users trying to make searches depending on the technology.

Once Version O has finished rooting through an infected user's address book it will use the search engines, spider-style, to look for those email addresses stupidly placed in online forums and webpages, and target itself towards those. So, there's never been a good time to fake an email address or write "at" instead of using the @ symbol- it used to keep you spam free, now it'll also keep viruses at bay.

On the back of this and the recent Osama Bin Laden suicide virus, Mcafee's Internet Security Suite v6 was up two places in the all format "games" chart to number six after three months on release, winning a price war against the outgoing version of Norton Internet Security.

Full tags

Software, Online, Viruses And Malware, Microsoft