It’s official. The SoBig.F internet worm is the fastest spreading e-mail plague of all time. MessageLabs, a company that filters e-mail for corporate clients around the world, says it intercepted more than a million copies of the virus in one day, reported the Ananova website.
That was one in every 17 email messages the firm scanned.
“That’s just a number we’ve never seen before,” said Brian Czarny, MessageLabs’ marketing director.
News of the new worm came as the MSBlaster worm was still at large, prompting security experts to warn that users could be facing the worst week ever for computer bugs.
Some staff members at the Mail & Guardian offices in Johannesburg reported receiving more than 2 000 e-mails before 11am on Thursday.
On computers running Microsoft’s Windows operating system, the new worm spreads via an e-mail with the subject line “Re: Details”, and the message “Please see attached files”. Users who click on the attachment allow the virus to spawn itself to names in the victim’s address book, where it continues to replicate.
Despite countless warnings about e-mail worms, certain people “continue to click on anything that comes up on their screen”, said Sophos security analyst Chris Belthoff. “We’ve seen a huge volume of activity around SoBig. We’ve seen companies whose e-mail systems have gone to a crawl or even shut down due to the sheer volume.”
The combined virus attack has presented an unprecedented challenged to iInternet security experts.
“There are literally millions of the SoBig e-mails that hit the internet all within a short period of time yesterday,” Belthoff said. “Without a doubt, this has been the busiest virus activity week, as far I can remember ever.” – Sapa-DPA
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