Cyberattack slows after shuttering of SCO's site
Date: February 03, 2004
Source: International Herald Tribune
The spread of the MyDoom computer worm was waning after it caused as many as 400,000 computers worldwide to bombard the Web site of SCO Group in the largest-ever such electronic attack, anti-virus experts said Monday.
"The worst is over and we expect very little to happen tomorrow," said Mikko Hypponen with the Helsinki-based computer security firm F-Secure. More than a million computers are believed to be infected worldwide, he said.
A second strain of the worm was programmed to begin an attack Tuesday on the site of Microsoft, whose products run on about 95 percent of personal computers. F-Secure said it had received fewer than two dozen reports about that second strain.
MyDoom, which first appeared a week ago, spreads an e-mail attachment that makes computers send waves of requests to specified Web sites. SCO Group, which is in a legal fight for control of the Unix operating system, shut down its site Saturday and put up an alternate on Monday.
The speed and severity of the attack sent a shiver through the Internet security community. In marshaling an army of PCs to silence an online target, MyDoom represents a new level of cyber warfare, security officials said. "With such a program, you could really take out any major Web site on the Internet," said Raimund Genes, European president of security software firm Trend Micro. (Bloomberg, Reuters)
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