MyDoom virus now on 11% of global emails

The new Internet worm MyDoom has gained momentum even faster than expert predictions, and is now spreading globally with one out of every nine emails infected. That’s the word from US-based Central Command, which provides anti-virus software and computer security services. “Many corporations and home users are being bombarded with MyDoom infected messages. This is by far the highest impacting worm of 2004,” says Steven Sundermeier, vice president. “The extremely aggressive nature of this new worm, which is less than 24 hours old, has demonstrated that the global email infrastructure is still very vulnerable to such attacks.” MyDoom carries multiple payloads, including the ability to turn infected machines into transparent proxies to launch other kinds of attacks. Additionally, the worm listens for commands on TCP/IP port 3127 awaiting instructions. “The collaboration of spamming techniques with virus coding is prompting a new era of virus writing,” says the firm. “This virus epidemic could create a global army of soldiers who are at the command of the virus author.” Built into MyDoom is a distributed denial of service (DDoS) attack against the SCO Group from February 1 to 12. For more information go to www.centralcommand.com