SAN FRANCISCO (Reuters) - A fast-spreading computer worm disrupted the world's most popular online search sites on Monday, scanning the vast databases of Google Inc. and other search engines to find the e-mail addresses of new victims.
The worm's assault came on the same day that Google disclosed it was seeking as much as $3.3 billion in its highly anticipated initial public offering, although there was no indication that the two events were related.
In a filing with stock regulators, Google made the prescient acknowledgment that "outages and delays" from viruses and worms could harm its business.
The online attack marked an evolution of a worm called MyDoom that infected hundreds of thousands of computers earlier this year. In the current variant, MyDoom not only scans the hard drives of victims for e-mail addresses, but also turns to online search sites to find additional leads.
The worm then sends a copy of itself as an e-mail attachment to those addresses. Users who open those attachments, and who are not protected by security software, infect their own computers.
"Those search requests have been overloading the search engines," said Lloyd Taylor, vice president of technology for Keynote Systems Inc., which measures Web site performance.
A Yahoo spokesman said the effect of the slowdown was limited solely to its search engine and said that by Monday afternoon that impact had been mitigated.
Google, in a statement, said that some of its users had experienced a slowdown but added that it expected full service would be "restored shortly" as of Monday afternoon.
Symantec Corp., a maker of security software, said it received 250 reports about the new worm in two hours, on pace with the original MyDoom attack in January.
"This is certainly equivalent to what we saw back then," said Oliver Friedrichs, a senior manager with Symantec's security response group.
INITIAL SIGNS OF TROUBLE
Initial signs of problems popped up on Monday morning, with reports from around the world that users were having problems searching on Google.com.
Keynote said the attack appeared to have started around 6:30 a.m. PDT (9:30 a.m. EDT), when East Coast office workers arrive and check their e-mail.
As of 2:30 p.m. PDT, the spread of the infection had not yet waned, though Web search sites had apparently found a way to block the automated search requests, Keynote's Taylor said. Antivirus vendors also had updates ready to protect against the latest strain of MyDoom, he said.
Monday's outbreak underscored the more widespread threat of Internet viruses, analysts said.
McAfee Inc. said on Monday it expected 2004 to be a record year in terms of the total number of "successful" viruses and worms, due to smarter malicious code writers and the still-common practice of computer users opening virus-laden messages.
Brian Mann, a virus outbreak manager at McAfee, said that at current rates up to 100 successful viruses and worms could run across the Internet by the end of this year compared with a total of 20 for all of 2003.
"We're already in record territory now" in terms of the number of successful viruses, which are assessed by McAfee as a "medium-risk" to "high-risk" threat, Mann said.
Several thousand computer security threats appear every year but most never cause widespread disruption due to protections, such as firewalls, that prevent malicious code from entering computer systems. (Additional reporting by Spencer Swartz in San Francisco, Ben Berkowitz in Los Angeles)
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From: Cedar Hill Washington | Registered: Aug 2002
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Well that definately explains why the internet was so slow this morning. I heard about My Doom. My friends told me it had something to do with Lynux, and some company marketing it, so someone got so mad that they created that virus which could potentially shut down the entire internet. Luckily word got out, and it didn't get too far
posted
Things to do first thing when you fire up your system.
1.) Manually update your virus protection. 2.) Check and see if there is an update for your software/ firmware firewall. 3.) Run your virus protection after checking for updates. 4.) Check and make sure your windows is up to date. 5.) If you are using another media player besides the one that came with windows check and see if there is an update.
What not to do. 1.) Never have the pre-view on in your E-mail. 2.) Never go to adult sites without extra protection like Adaware Plus--with Ad-Watch running in the background. Forget the free Adaware. 3.) Never open an attachment without first right clicking on it and doing a manual virus scan. 4.) If you use an instant messageing program and someone send to you a file scan it before you open it. Hitch hikers can attach themselves to it. 5.) Never store your credit card numbers on your system.
The biggest reason virus etc. do so much damage is the operator is just flat out lazy. They get a worm or worse and it sends itself to everyone in there E-mail box.
Weekly clean out all of your temp files/ cookies. XP users there are two levels. One in your brower under tools> internet options > clean out temp files--to include off line, cookies, and history. The other temp file you have to remove manually. First you must turn on "Show hidden folders."
Open Windows explorer > Tools > Folder Options > Place a check in show all hidden folders.
Path to the hidden temp files:
C:\Documents and Settings\Your name\Local Settings\Temporary Internet Files Delete these.
Next path: C:\Documents and Settings\Your name\Local Settings\Temp Delete these.
Remember you now can see all hidden files, so make sure when you delete something it is not a system file~~~If you delete what I said you will not have a problem...Again don't delete something you are not sure about...post a question first.
BTW My system is on 24/7 (I run a gaming voice server is why) and I have my system run my virus protection at 5 am everyday. Thing are getting crazy and until service patch 2 comes out (XP users) you need to stay on top of this. Pineapple_Raye
From: St. Petersburg Florida | Registered: Jul 2004
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posted
wow Raye! I didn't know there was another computer protection nut out there! I do all that stuff, and i unplug from the net when i do stuff that doesn't require it. Sometimes i'll do a recheck just in case there's a thing that needs to be online in order to cause trouble.
This reminds me of a High Jack a few months back that nothing I was running at the time could find it.
I've got a gaming friend who is one very smart IT manager a few states North of me to help me out. Well I granted him full access to my system. After about an hour or so he found this cotton picken' thing in my boot sector!!!!!
Well it was remove...Opppsie it came back. So he told me were it was at and how to get rid of it. I unpluged my connection to the net. Remove it and never saw it again~~~~go figure.
There are some very smart folks out there with too much time on there hands.
Too bad these folks do use their talents to bring down site of the bad guys.
From: St. Petersburg Florida | Registered: Jul 2004
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posted
I agree!!! They do it just for the thrill of it or something and it can do soooooooooo much damage to sooooo many people..... And what a HEADACHE!!
And then if people aren't lucky enough to have a friend like that to help them out *free* the cost and lost time on these stupid jokes is ludacris. And the helpless feeling people have and out of pocket money they go thru to get help to fix their machines!!!
Weezie
bbbbbbbbb Weezie
Don't forget to be kind to strangers. For some who have done this have entertained angels without realizing it. - Bible - Hebrews 13:2
Celebrating 10 years of helping your gardens grow!
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I do all that stuff, and i unplug from the net when i do stuff that doesn't require it. Sometimes i'll do a recheck just in case there's a thing that needs to be online in order to cause trouble.
