This virus uses loopholes in Windows to look through address books for e-mail addresses to send itself to.
Mydoom is also known as Novarg or Mimail-R. You may have seen e-mail messages turning up in your inbox bearing the following subject lines:
- hi
- error
- mail delivery system
- mail transaction failed
- server report
- status
- test
- random characters
and others . . .
The subject lines make the malicious mail look like an error message with the text of the supposedly wrongly sent message in an attachment. Many people have clicked on the attachment to find out which of their messages has not got through and thereby inadvertently infected their machine.
Infected e-mails may look as though they are from a trusted or known source. Do not be fooled - the virus specialises in creating believeable e-mail addresses to send from.
If you are running an up to date virus checker such as Norton Antivirus with e-mail scanning enabled it WILL detect the virus.
If you are not sure, the the golden rule - as always - is DO NOT OPEN ANY ATTACHMENTS unles you are absolutely sure what they are.
If you think your PC may be infected, then download the removal tool from Symantec and read the instructions carefully before running it. You can download the removal tool here
Nick -
