A computer virus called Mydoom has
infected about 16 percent of e-mail messages worldwide and shows
no signs of slowing. SCO Group Inc., whose Web site is under
attack by the virus, offered a $250,000 reward for the arrest and
conviction of the malicious code’s author.
Mydoom has probably infected 250,000 computers via e-mail
since Jan. 26, said Tony Magallanez, at engineer with Helsinki-based security-software maker F-Secure Oyj. That’s the highest
since the SoBig worm that slowed or shut down hundreds of
thousands of computers in August.
Beyond Cash Donations: How New Forms of Giving Are Transforming Not-for-Profit Accounting
Evolving Funding Landscape for Not-for-Profits Not-for-profit organizations are being asked to do more with less,…
Learn More
“The rate of infection has not declined, but it has leveled
off at about 16 percent of all e-mail messages worldwide,” said
Magallanez from San Jose, Calif. The rate of infection has
stopped increasing recently as companies have
deployed more programs to clean up their computers, he said.
Mydoom is slowing company e-mail systems by installing a
command in infected computers to send a flood of information
requests to SCO’s Web site when the computer’s clock shows the date
is on or after Feb. 1, F-Secure and Symantec Corp. said.
SCO, which is trying to collect royalties from companies using
the Linux operating system, said its Web site was down for 10
minutes Tuesday. While the company isn’t certain Mydoom was to blame,
it wants to head off any possible attacks scheduled for Sunday,
spokesman Blake Stowell said.
“They’re going to have a lot more trouble in a few days,”
said Craig Schmugar, a virus research manager with Network
Associates Inc.’s McAfee division, referring to Lindon, Utah-based SCO.
Personal computers whose clocks are set wrong are probably
responsible for the attacks on SCO, Magallanez said.
Such PCs with incorrect clock settings are probably less than
a half of 1 percent of all infected machines, Schmugar said.
The rate of infection of e-mail has not slowed as expected,
Monitoring by McAfee shows. The company, which obtains reports of
infected messages from e-mail service providers, expects the virus
to taper off after Wednesday morning San Francisco time, Schmugar
said.
“February 12th may be the only certain thing that makes this
stop,” said Schmugar, citing the date on which Mydoom’s attack on
SCO is programmed to conclude.
SCO is working with the Federal Bureau of Investigation and
the U.S. Secret Service but has been given no information about
the possible identity of the virus’s author, SCO’s Stowell said.
Bloomberg News
