“A new worm dubbed ‘Doomjuice’ targeting Microsoft Corp.’s Web site emerged on the Internet on Monday, which security experts said slowed parts of the software maker’s home page,” Reuters reports. “Doomjuice, which some are describing as a variant of the MyDoom worm, spreads via e-mail systems already infected with the first version, which became the fastest-spreading virus ever when it was unleashed on the Internet at the end of January.”
“‘It’s only looking for machines that are compromised by MyDoom A or B,’ said Vincent Gullotto, vice president of the anti-virus emergency response team at Network Associates Inc. He said it was not spreading as rapidly as the initial MyDoom worms. Because Doomjuice spreads directly between infected computers, rather than via e-mail, experts said that it would not be accurate to call it a variant of MyDoom, which accounted for as many as one in five e-mails at its peak in late January.”
“Doomjuice, which experts said was most likely created by the same author as MyDoom, is designed to flood Microsoft’s web site for request for data in an effort to bring it down, an attack known as a distributed denial of service. Redmond, Washington-based Microsoft said that ‘all Microsoft.com web properties are stable and available to customers.’ Security experts noted, however, that Microsoft’s Web site was slower and was intermittently unavailable over the weekend,” Reuters reports.
Macintosh computers are unaffected by this worm beyond the email and Internet slowdowns these Windows worms cause for every computer user.
Full article here.
They could at least have named it after another game, like Halo or something. These virus writers are getting so unoriginal.
4th big worm in just the first month an 1/2 of the year. Wow…this looks to be a banner year for PC Antivirus companies.
” width=”19″ height=”19″ alt=”wink” style=”border:0;” />
Windows users should just be glad that none of these are really destructive. Back in my pre-Mac days (a loooong time ago) I used to have to clean this kind of crap off Win 3.1 and Dos, those things were much worse. Wrecking files, causing the system to become unbootable, and spreading to every damn disk that ventured near the PC! This modern stuff’s just a minor pain in the posterior, but keeps loads of geeks in a job.
i thought i read that these doom ones let hackers take over your computer and look at your files. they arent just to attack from?
Well yeas, they open up certain ports for remote access, which in this case has been used to spread yet another worm, but it could also be used to install a program that deletes files or mines for specific data. Thanks to winDOH’s security settings the main user grants access to the entire system to any program they run, so they could really run wild.
What’s amazing is, we’re still seeing computers come into work here with old Viruses. Remember “I Love You”? “Melissa”? “Happy99”? In the last month along, we’ve have at least 7 computers come in with those in the last couple of months. We had a computer that had 27 viruses and worms on it. Not to mention over 900 Spyware and Adware items, and 2 browser hijacks.
And PC Zealots say “Macs are for stupid people.” Excuse me while I snicker evily.
Argh. This is why posting comments while trying to answer ISP Tech calls is bad. That sentence should read “I the last couple of months alone, we’ve had at least 7 computers come in with those worms/viruses/trojans.”
Pardon my bad grammer.
Warn your wintel friends. Have them update their “the most secure OS ever from MS” today. We don’t need any more junk mails this month.
http://apnews.myway.com//article/20040210/D80KJ01G1.html
s, don’t bother. This one doesn’t use the mail system. If you still want to help the less fortunate, make sure they know who isn’t affected!
” width=”19″ height=”19″ alt=”wink” style=”border:0;” />
oops, just realised you meant the flaw mentioned in the article you linked to. now that sounds nasty!
and in other news, M$ today announced one of the most severe vulnerabilities to date, allowing dozens of ways for hackers to get into windoze machines. Knew about it in July but wanted to deal with it with only a single patch. hmmm, betcha Apple would be fed crow if they did that!
Golly, more great Windows software!