 |
| Google is one of the internet search engines used
by the MyDoom-O worm |
Google whacked by internet worm
Virus experts at Sophos have reported that millions of computer
users around the globe found their access to the world's most
popular internet search engine, Google, disrupted by the W32/MyDoom-O worm
yesterday.
The MyDoom-O worm has been spreading widely across
internet email systems, duping innocent users into launching its
malicious attachment.
If run, the worm not only attempts to scoop up addresses to send
itself to from the infected user's hard drive, but can also use the
internet search engines Google, Altavista, Lycos and Yahoo to hunt
for other email addresses.
"This is unprecedented - no virus has ever used internet search
engines before in their attempt to find other email addresses to
send itself to," said Graham Cluley, senior technology consultant
for Sophos. "The effect on Google was considerable - for a few
hours millions saw an error message whenever they tried to search.
Whether the virus intended it or not, it denied many users access
to one of the internet's most popular features."
A Google spokesperson confirmed the disruption in a statement to
the press, "The Google search engine experienced slowness for a
short period of time because of the MyDoom virus, which flooded
major search engines with automated searches."
Sophos notes that Google was not the only search engine which
could be used by the MyDoom-O worm, but was the most likely to be
accessed. Coded inside MyDoom-O is the ability to use the
Altavista, Lycos or Yahoo search engines to hunt for email
addresses as well as Google, but the decision as to which to use is
made via a probability calculation:
- www.google.com (45%)
- search.lycos.com (22.5%)
- search.yahoo.com (20%)
- www.altavista.com (12.5%)
"For whatever reason the virus author has ranked the internet
search engines, and chosen which ones they want the worm to use
most of the time - Google and Lycos," continued Cluley. "By using
internet search engines in this way the worm's creator is
effectively attempting a kind of denial of service attack against
these websites."
More than 100 million users in 150 countries rely on Sophos as the best protection against complex threats and data loss. Sophos is committed to providing security and data protection solutions that are simple to manage, deploy and use and that deliver the industry's lowest total cost of ownership. Sophos offers award-winning encryption, endpoint security, web, email, and network access control solutions backed by SophosLabs - a global network of threat intelligence centers. With more than two decades of experience, Sophos is regarded as a leader in security and data protection by top analyst firms and has received many industry awards.
Sophos is headquartered in Boston, US and Oxford, UK. More information is available at www.sophos.com.