www.BPODigest.com i-Vortal

Evolution of a Worm

Not long after the Department of Homeland Security announced its National Cyber Alert System at a morning press conference, security experts detected "MyDoom.B," which carries instructions for infected computers to launch a denial-of-service attack against Microsoft Corp.

The new worm quickly had the honor of being the subject of the government's cyber-alert system. Read the DHS's technical and non-technical postings on MyDoom, or sign up for the alerts at www.us-cert.gov.

Security firm Symantec said the "worm will perform a Denial of Service (DoS) against www.microsoft.com starting February 3, 2004 and www.sco.com starting February 1, 2004. It also has a trigger date to stop spreading on March 1, 2004. These events will only occur if the worm is run between or after those dates. While the worm will stop spreading on March 1, 2004, the backdoor component will continue to function after this date."

Worse yet, CNET's News.com reported, experts said MyDoom.B "prevents PC users from going to security sites and could block some antivirus software from getting the latest updates. The new virus adds a file to the infected computer that tells it where to look for certain Internet addresses. Among the addresses are F-Secure's update site, Symantec's update site and Microsoft's downloads site. Symantec confirmed that its users may have to delete the file before they can update their antivirus software, while Microsoft was still investigating the effect on Windows users."

Source: Evolution of a Worm (TechNews.com)