|
THE world's worst
computer virus brought chaos around the globe yesterday.
It spread like
wildfire, sending networks crashing and threatening to virtually
kill off the internet.
Experts fear it could
eventually bring the system to a halt by swamping it with
unwanted messages.
The virus - dubbed
SoBig-F - is believed to have infected one in 17 of all emails
within just 48 hours of its creation.
And it is believed
other equally devastating viruses may already be on the way.
Internet giant AOL
claims to have intercepted almost 12 million copies of the bug,
which spreads by hijacking email address books.
And British-based
watch-dogs Messagelab said email traffic could increase by 60per
cent, slowing the internet to a crawl.
Chief information
analyst Paul Wood said yesterday: "It's unprecedented. We
stopped over one million infections in the first day."
He added: "It's a
frightening statistic. And the next incarnation of the virus
could be even worse." Sobig-F is believed to have started
in America and has spread to 148 countries.
Graham Cluley of
anti-virus firm Sophos said: "This will almost certainly
become the worst virus of all time.
"It's effectively
killing the internet by creating vast numbers of emails that
clog everything up."
He added: "The
incredible thing is that it has only been around for two days,
we have never seen anything like it." Messages to watch out
for include those with subject lines such as "Re:
details", "Re: approved", "Re: Thankyou!",
"Re: That movie" and "Re: wicked
screensaver".
Technicians have been
struggling for more than a week to fend off the most concerted
digital onslaught ever. It began 10 days ago with the so-called
Blaster, or LovSan worm which, hit more than 500,000 computers
running the latest version of Microsoft Windows. On Wednesday
Air Canada's booking and check-in operation was brought to a
standstill by a virus known as White Hat.
Experts have advised
people never to run programs sent to them via email as they
could contain a virus.
SoBig-F is said to be
spreading faster than the notorious Lovebug, which caused one in
three company email systems to crash in May 2000.
|
