Last week, one in 17 e-mails worldwide was affected by the
SoBig.F virus.
The latest variant of the mass-mailing SoBig virus,
W32/SoBig.F, spread this month more rapidly than any prior virus, infecting more than 200 million computers. It spread by harvesting e-mail addresses
from Web pages and from address books of infected computers. It sends a copy of itself with subject lines
such as “Your Details,” “Re: Details,” “Re: Approved,” and “Thank You.” The virus also spreads by copying itself
onto shared network hard drives that are accessible to the infected computer.
SoBig.F does not physically damage computers, files, or
critical data, but it ties up computer and networking resources. Thus far, SoBig.F has caused headaches for
network administrators and caused delays in many systems at businesses,
colleges, and other institutions.
Removing all the extra e-mails takes time. The University of Wisconsin-Madison had to shut down outside
access to its e-mail system and they were removing 30,000 infected e-mails per
hour. MIT had a similar avalanche of
bad e-mails. The New York Times shut
down its computers system for several hours on August 22. Two California State agencies were impacted.
The FBI and the Department of Homeland Security are
partnering to investigate the SoBig virus.
The SoBig.F worm is programmed to expire September 10, but
if trends continue, the new and improved So.Big.G should appear later in
September. Many are worried that future
versions will be more harmful. Thus
far, most hackers writing malicious code have been interested primarily in
notoriety. But experts say that lately
they are seeing more viruses motivated by ideology or criminal intent, such as
identity theft.
What can you do to protect your computer?
- Install
anti-virus software (e.g., Norton from Symantec) and keep it current with
the latest updates.
- Don’t
ever open attached files on e-mails unless you know they are safe.
- Be
alert (the world needs more lerts).
