Thank you for being a valued part of the CNET community. As of December 1, 2020, the forums are in read-only format. In early 2021, CNET Forums will no longer be available. We are grateful for the participation and advice you have provided to one another over the years.

Thanks,

CNET Support

General discussion

Virus Outbreak: More E-Mail Worms Are Set Loose

Mar 1, 2004 5:09AM PST

By Dennis Fisher
March 1, 2004

UPDATED: Since Friday, virus writers have been on a rampage, unleashing more than a half-dozen new viruses, some of them proving to be quite effective.






Maybe it's the weirdness of having 29 days in February or some misplaced glee that spring is coming, but for whatever reason virus writers went on a rampage during the last week, unleashing more than a half-dozen new viruses.


Since Friday, five new versions of the Bagle virus have appeared, not to mention a couple of fresh variants of NetSky. None of the viruses appears to be particularly clever or innovative. However, several of them already have proved to be quite effective.

The most widespread of the new malware is NetSky.C, which has infected nearly 100,000 machines since its debut Feb. 25, according to Trend Micro Inc. NeySky.D also is on the loose and is a bit odd in that it attempts to deactivate two earlier worms, MyDoom.A and MyDoom.B. This variant was gaining ground Monday morning, anti-virus companies said.

By Monday afternoon, most of the major antivirus vendors had rated NetSky.D as a high risk, although it had only infected about 600 machines, according to Trend Micro's statistics.

Read more: http://www.eweek.com/article2/0,1759,1541056,00.asp

Discussion is locked