AS the Mydoom computer worm continued to clog up the internet today, its successor Mydoom.B was not spreading as violently as feared, security experts pointing to design flaws in the latest version of the bug.
“Over 40 per cent of the internet traffic now consists of infected emails generated by the first Mydoom virus, and it’s still spreading,” Mikko Hyppoenen, of the Finnish anti-virus firm F-Secure, told AFP.
“It’s levelling off slowly however, and it’s less visible to the end user, but ISPs (internet service providers) still face problems with the email loads.”
The Mydoom bugs are worms, a subgroup of computer viruses characterised by the fact that they spread independently through email, Hyppoenen said.
The Russian security firm Kaspersky Lab said today that Mydoom.B was being propagated by the 600,000 or so computers that were infected by Mydoom.A.
With 40% of all e-mails garbage generated by this worm and–I’m guessing here–57% devoted to penis enlargement spam and Nigerian financial opportunities, the toll on the system is rather high.
Resolved: Death by slow torture is too good for the people who create and intentionally distribute these e-mails.
Discuss.
