[Histonet] Background on virus
From CNN news:
SoBig Virus Is So Worrying for Computer Users
By Bernhard Warner
LONDON (Reuters) - A new computer virus feared to be
the most potent ever
spread like wildfire Thursday, sending e-mail
networks crashing and frazzling
technicians already overstretched by a plague of
computer bugs.
The SoBig virus spreads when unsuspecting computer
users open file
attachments in e-mails that contain such familiar
headings as "Thank you," "Re:
Details" or "Re: approved."
Once the file is opened, SoBig, which first appeared
Monday, scours the
computer for e-mail addresses, checking in Word
documents, Internet logs and
e-mail inboxes.
Designed like mass-mailing spam programs, it then
sends scores of messages
to the addresses it has collected.
MessageLabs, a British-based Internet security firm,
said one in 17 e-mails sent
around the world since Monday had been affected by
SoBig.
MessageLabs' chief information analyst Paul Wood said
it was feared that it
could increase global e-mail traffic by as much as 60
percent, slowing the
Internet to a crawl.
"It's unprecedented in our history. We stopped over
one million (infections) in the
first day," he said.
"It's a pretty frightening statistic. And the next
incarnation could be even worse."
Technicians have been scrambling for the past week to
fend off the most
concentrated digital onslaught ever seen.
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