"The new version, variously dubbed MyDoom.m or MyDoom.o, was first detected early Monday morning and quickly went on a tear, flooding many mailboxes with hundreds of messages. It has also slowed Google, Yahoo, AltaVista and Lycos to a crawl, because once it infects a PC, the virus automatically performs Web searches on those search engines."reports CNet.
"The worm uses the search sites to find any published e-mail addresses with the same domain name as the main e-mail address on the infected computer, said Vincent Weafer, senior director for security company Symantec's security response center. If you're infected, and your main e-mail address ends with @mycompany.com, for example, the worm will mainly attempt to propagate itself to other mycompany.com addresses.
"The technique offers several evolutionary advantages, Weafer said, most significantly the psychological advantage of having infected messages look as if they come from co-workers. 'It's really the special engineering aspect of making you think it's coming from someone inside your company,' Weafer said."
