New Virus Warning
Over the past couple days a new virus has sprouted up and is causing quite a bit of people some rather big headaches (i.e. IT groups). I’m telling you guys this because I don’t want you all to get this virus and even if you update your virus software every day, I would suggest doing an update right now.
What does it do?
The virus is called Mydoom (Technical name is W32.Novarg.A@mm) and is a mass-mailing worm that arrives as an attachment with the file extension .bat, .cmd, .exe, .pif, .scr, or .zip. When a computer is infected, the worm will set up a backdoor into your system by opening TCP ports 3127 thru 3198. This can potentially allow an attacker to connect to the computer and use it as a proxy to gain access to its network resources. In addition, the backdoor has the ability to download and execute arbitrary files.
The mass-mailing worm, called “Mydoom” or “Novarg,” arrives with various subject lines and comes with a “.zip” attachment file that, when opened, can pick off e-mail addresses on a computer’s hard drive and fire off infected e-mails to other computers. A computer is only infected when the attached file is opened — and how many times have we been told not to open attachments we aren’t expecting? Washington Post
The worm will perform a DoS starting on February 1, 2004. It also has a trigger date to stop spreading on February 12, 2004.
Who’s Affected
If you have Windows 2000, Windows 95, Windows 98, Windows Me, Windows NT, Windows Server 2003, Windows XP - you’re wide open to this attack.
Who’s NOT Affected
Macintosh, DOS, Linux, OS/2, UNIX, Windows 3.x
Help Me!
I would suggest doing some reading about the virus and then manually download the required tools to either safe-guard your computer or learn how to remove it if you already have it.Oh - and if you get an email from me that doesn’t look like something I would send you, just delete it. Don’t click reply, don’t open it up, don’t do anything with it except get ride of it.
If you could however, let me know if you received something like this from me and when you got it. I don’t use Windows computers anymore so my personal computer is safe but email can easily be spoofed and made to look like I sent something to you.
