Molouk Y. Ba-Isa, Arab News Staff

ALKHOBAR, 29 January 2004 — Anti-virus companies around the world are on red alert as the sheer volume of infected e-mail generated by the Mydoom.A worm threatens to bring down the Internet. The spread of this malicious code significantly exceeds Sobig.F, which up until now was considered the fastest disseminating virus ever.

“Looking at the amount of e-mail traffic, Mydoom has passed the Sobig.F virus as being the largest outbreak ever, which is quite historical,” said Mikko Hyppoenen, head of anti-virus research at the Finnish group F-Secure.

According to Hyppoenen, the Mydoom or Novarg virus outbreak started late Monday European time, which was still during office hours in North America. As a result most of the infected computers and e-mail traffic are in Canada and the United States.

The Sobig.F virus, which struck in August 2003, infected millions of computers and caused over 300 million infected e-mails to be sent during its first week.

According to Spain’s Panda Software, Mydoom has overtaken that record having generated 300 million infected e-mails in its first 48 hours in the wild. The US Federal Bureau of Investigation is already investigating the bug.

US Homeland Security officials have launched a new “cyber-alert” system to assist computer users. The Department of Homeland Security said its program would give people “timely and actionable information to better secure their computer systems.”

The new program offered by DHS allows computer users to receive e-mail alerts and technical bulletins on computer security vulnerabilities, potential impact, and action required to limit threats. Users can sign up for alerts at the website of the US government-funded Computer Emergency Readiness Team (www.us-cert.gov).

In Saudi Arabia, the virus is attacking individual users and wreaking havoc on the Internet service providers (ISPs), but large enterprises remain unaffected.

“Not one of our clients, and this includes financial institutions, industries and government organizations, has reported an outbreak of Mydoom,” said Mirza Asrar Baig, CEO of local network security firm IT Matrix. “This time the international anti-virus vendors released their detection updates very quickly. These have been installed at the network gateways of major Saudi enterprises so they are protected. However, the stress on the Internet globally is a concern, as this will slow down e-mail traffic.”

Mydoom spreads through e-mail attachments and downloads from the popular Kazaa file-sharing service. Updated firewalls and anti-virus solutions are essential for avoiding the effects of the Mydoom epidemic. Mydoom.A not only attacks networks, it also creates a backdoor in the infected computers, which could allow hackers to steal or compromise data. The latest research from Panda Software shows this backdoor will allow a file to be dropped on the affected computer, which when run, enables the attacker to access network resources.

— Additional input from agencies