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MyDoom breaks records

Ahh MyDoom, the plucky little virus that could.

Ahh MyDoom, the plucky little virus that could.

It started inconspicuously two weeks ago with routine warnings about a new virus that was making the rounds and the usual stern advice not to open any strange e-mail attachment, no matter who they’re from.

And did the people listen to the experts? No, they did not. They never do.

By the time Thursday (Jan. 29) rolled around as many as one out of every three e-mails circulating on the Internet was a variation of virus, prompting some industry watchers to declare that MyDoom (also known as Novarg) was officially the worst virus in cyber history. Early estimates believe the total cost of this virus, in terms of damages and lost productivity, will be in excess of $35 billion.

If you’re one of those people who helped make it happen by opening an e-mail attachment you shouldn’t have, then congratulations – we couldn’t have hit this milestone without you.

The problem doesn’t lie with computers, but with the people out there who still don’t understand how these viruses work.

MyDoom, like most of the big viruses, uses e-mail to propagate itself. When you activate a virus by opening an e-mail attachment, the virus gets into your e-mail address book and sends copies of itself to everyone you know. Most of these viruses are relatively easy to spot and MyDoom is no exception.

MyDoom usually arrives in your Inbox with subject line that says "Hello" or "Test", or mimics a Mail Delivery Error. The text is simple, and directs you to open the attachment if you want to get your message.

One of these text prompters says the message is in ASCII format, and advises you to open the attachment if you want to read it.

That alone should be enough to set off the alarm bells. ASCII is the basic text coding used by most computers, and is something of a universal standard. Chances are the e-mails you receive are in ASCII already.

Once you open the attachment, which has either a .exe, .scr, .zip or .pif extension, the virus goes to work.

MyDoom immediately sends itself to every contact in your address book and uses your computer to scour the Webs for more computers and addresses to send itself to. That’s how MyDoom tied up networks, slowed up servers, and clogged Internet bandwith.

One variation of the virus hid itself away in infected computers, ticking away the hours until Sunday (Feb. 1) when all at once infected computers attempted to connect to SCO Group.

Hundreds of thousands of visitors and requests from outside computers effectively crippled the SCO Web site for days. More attacks are expected until the virus expires on Feb. 12, forcing the company to come up with a contingency plan – e.g. a backup site – to keep the SCO online.

SCO wasn’t the only victim. Another variation of the virus targeted Microsoft with attacks starting on Tuesday. With a few extra days to respond, Microsoft did a better job weathering MyDoom than SCO.

Clogging up a Web site with visits and requests is known as denial of service attack, which is fairly common in recent years.

Microsoft is often a target for cyber attacks, and the SCO became a large target recently after the company announced plans to sue developers using the Linux code in their applications.

According to the SCO, the Linux operating system – a free, open source software developed by literally thousands of individuals in cooperation with one another – uses lines of SCO’s own copyrighted Unix code.

IBM is just one of the companies being sued, for a billion dollars no less, for using Linux to power a new line of server applications. As a result of this action and others, SCO could very well be one of the most hated companies in the industry right now.

Investigators believe that it was probably one of Linux’s rabid supporters that unleashed MyDoom on the world, infecting more than half a million computers. Linux is a big community, so it’s doubtful that the culprit will ever be found – even though SCO and Microsoft are each offering a $250,000 reward to anyone who provides information leading to the arrest of the virus’s author.

MyDoom will continue to make headlines as it runs its courses, setting new records as it goes. I, for one, will not miss it. Over the weekend almost three dozen copies of the virus wound in my e-mail Inbox, and I got off lightly.

To sum up: Do not open any e-mail attachments, no matter who sent them, unless you know exactly what it is that you’re opening. If you have any doubts at all, then send the e-mail to the trash.

To learn more about using your e-mail software safely, visit PC World (www.pcworld.com) and read the main article "E-Mail: Use it Wisely".

And if you have anti-virus software, you might want to get it updated.

Intel launches next generation chips

Intel’s new line of Pentium 4 chips are fast, no question, but that’s not the most interesting thing about them.

The first versions of the chips to be released have been clocked at 3.4-gigahertz, about 10 per cent faster than the previous benchmark. Future releases at the end of the year are expected to break the 4.0-gigahertz mark.

It’s what lies beyond that’s truly remarkable. A new 90 nanometer manufacturing technology – the width of the circuitry built into the processors – was used to produce the chips, enabling smaller, more complex architecture than was possible in the past. A nanometer is one-billionth of a meter, if you’re wondering.

The computer system and software doesn’t exist yet to make full use of this capability, but it’s only a matter of time. In the meantime, smaller architecture could allow for things like even smaller phones, smarter watches, PDA’s with the capability of desktop computers, and more.

According to Intel, the new chips were designed for "Entertainment PC’s" – computers that double as stereo systems, DVD players, game consoles, televisions and more.

The new chips are also expected to be able to handle 64-bit applications, following in the footsteps of Apple and AMD.