“A new computer worm dubbed ‘Netsky-D’ was clogging e-mail systems around the world after emerging on Monday, a security expert said,” Reuters reports. “The worm is particularly difficult to root out because it lands in e-mail boxes using a number of different subject lines such as ‘re:details’ or ‘re:here is the document.'”
“‘It arrives with an attached pif file (program information file) and it’s already extremely widespread,’ said Graham Cluley, senior technology consultant at Sophos Plc. He said experts do not think the new virus is as big as MyDoom, which brought havoc to computer users and targeted Microsoft’s Web Site, but that the full extent of Netsky-D’s spread would be known as North America logs on. When opened, the virus pif file will rapidly replicate itself, slowing down computers and e-mail bandwidth,” Reuters reports.
Macintosh users are unaffected beyond the usual ‘Net and email slowdowns due to Windows machines executing this worm.
Full article here.
Related MacDailyNews article:
Washington Post: Internet punishing for Windows users, Mac users surf with impunity – February 28, 2004