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© Copyright 2004, Jim Loy
The W32.Mydoom (also called Novarg or SCO) worm has been the most prolific virus ever. I have been getting about 40 to 50 copies of it every day. I am protected by Norton AntiVirus (see their Security Response section), but it has been something of a bother. Very likely, it is slowing down the Internet. Luckily, it seems to be designed to die on February 12. It is called the SCO virus, because it is scheduled to shut down www.sco.com (whoever they are) on February 1. It seems to be addressed to a few random names at the various domains, so if your user name is one of these random names, you may get a lot email with this virus. And, if you have your own domain name, you will probably get a huge amount of email, addressed to various user names. You may also get a lot of messages saying that email from you was undeliverable and contained a virus (some of these warnings actually contain the virus); very likely none of this undeliverable email (with your return address) was from you.
If your computer is infected by the virus, it will be sending a lot of email, spreading the virus, and may slow down your Internet sessions greatly. I see that this virus may create a back door into your computer, allowing someone access to your computer over the Internet (the virus designer probably has no interest in your computer, but someone else might use that back door). I assume this is a problem only while you are online.
I guess I could have guessed this would happen. Since Mydoom was so nice as to voluntarily die on February 12 (13th actually), someone has modified it by removing the expiration date. And now we have Mydoom.F. This one is also intended to damage Microsoft and www.riaa.com (a music company involved in anti-piracy).