NCAAbbs has received 1,735 new e-mails in the last few hours. Please be careful if opening new mail if you use Windows.

Sounds like this new virus. They said it's harmless b/c of what it does, but don't open an email unless you know the person whose sending it. And then I would think twice before opening it.

HELSINKI (AFP) - A new Internet worm, dubbed Netsky.D, was spreading quickly throughout the world and could soon overtake the Mydoom.A and Sobig.F viruses in proliferation, Internet security experts said.

"It's spreading globally, and really fast, and much faster than anything we have seen before," Mikko Hypponen, in charge of anti-virus research at Finnish Internet security firm F-Secure, told AFP.


But aside from spreading rapidly, Netsky.D does not harm computers, he said.


Hypponen attributed its virulence to the fact that it was initially distributed through a huge amount of spam e-mails -- unsolicited bulk messages -- to thousands of e-mail addresses in just a few minutes on Monday.


Its "success" was also due to Netsky.D's ability to search for e-mail addresses to send itself to on machines connected through corporate networks to contaminated machines.


"So through infecting just one computer, it can get hold of all e-mail addresses stored on a corporate computer network, maybe some 50,0000 in all, from just a single infected machine," Hypponen noted.


While the now infamous Mydoom.A worm in late January and last year's Sobig.F virus generated a million infected e-mails in their first 24 hours, Netsky.D had on Monday already surpassed the 200,000 mark in just hours, experts said.


"If it continues spreading at these levels it might go on to break the previous records set by Mydoom.A and Sobig.F," Hypponen noted.


In comparison to those viruses however, which opened up infected machines to outside hackers and collected e-mail addresses for spam purposes, Netsky.D was not damaging computers, Hypponen noted.


"It's not deleting any files, or attacking anybody. It will just overload web servers with infected e-mails and play a funny tune on the infected computers," he said.


From 06:00 to 08:59 on March 2, irrespective of time zone, the worm will make contaminated computers play a continuous jingle through their loudspeakers, noted Snorre Fagerland, virus analyst with Norwegian Internet security firm Norman.


But by giving itself away like that however, it was likely Netsky.D was the work of a hobby virus writer rather than some professional with malicious intent, he added.


The first version of the Netsky internet worm family was discovered on February 16, and since then a total of five incarnations have been found, including the latest, Netsky.E, found on Monday as well.


Over the past few days virus-crackers have faced a storm of new bugs, most notably five new variants of the Bagle Internet worms in addition to the two latest Netsky versions, but only Netsky.D spreads globally, Fagerland noted.


Since it, in comparison to most other bugs, has no expiration date and will spread itself in perpetuity, it will remain a menace and clog up the Internet and corporate networks with infected e-mails for some time to come, he warned.

studentfan Wrote:Sounds like this new virus. They said it's harmless b/c of what it does, but don't open an email unless you know the person whose sending it. And then I would think twice before opening it.

HELSINKI (AFP) - A new Internet worm, dubbed Netsky.D, was spreading quickly throughout the world and could soon overtake the Mydoom.A and Sobig.F viruses in proliferation, Internet security experts said.

"It's spreading globally, and really fast, and much faster than anything we have seen before," Mikko Hypponen, in charge of anti-virus research at Finnish Internet security firm F-Secure, told AFP.


But aside from spreading rapidly, Netsky.D does not harm computers, he said.


Hypponen attributed its virulence to the fact that it was initially distributed through a huge amount of spam e-mails -- unsolicited bulk messages -- to thousands of e-mail addresses in just a few minutes on Monday.


Its "success" was also due to Netsky.D's ability to search for e-mail addresses to send itself to on machines connected through corporate networks to contaminated machines.


"So through infecting just one computer, it can get hold of all e-mail addresses stored on a corporate computer network, maybe some 50,0000 in all, from just a single infected machine," Hypponen noted.


While the now infamous Mydoom.A worm in late January and last year's Sobig.F virus generated a million infected e-mails in their first 24 hours, Netsky.D had on Monday already surpassed the 200,000 mark in just hours, experts said.


"If it continues spreading at these levels it might go on to break the previous records set by Mydoom.A and Sobig.F," Hypponen noted.


In comparison to those viruses however, which opened up infected machines to outside hackers and collected e-mail addresses for spam purposes, Netsky.D was not damaging computers, Hypponen noted.


"It's not deleting any files, or attacking anybody. It will just overload web servers with infected e-mails and play a funny tune on the infected computers," he said.


From 06:00 to 08:59 on March 2, irrespective of time zone, the worm will make contaminated computers play a continuous jingle through their loudspeakers, noted Snorre Fagerland, virus analyst with Norwegian Internet security firm Norman.


But by giving itself away like that however, it was likely Netsky.D was the work of a hobby virus writer rather than some professional with malicious intent, he added.


The first version of the Netsky internet worm family was discovered on February 16, and since then a total of five incarnations have been found, including the latest, Netsky.E, found on Monday as well.


Over the past few days virus-crackers have faced a storm of new bugs, most notably five new variants of the Bagle Internet worms in addition to the two latest Netsky versions, but only Netsky.D spreads globally, Fagerland noted.


Since it, in comparison to most other bugs, has no expiration date and will spread itself in perpetuity, it will remain a menace and clog up the Internet and corporate networks with infected e-mails for some time to come, he warned.

Being a Network Admin for an ISP, I can tell you that I shriek to hear them say that it is harmless.

First, email viruses increase the amount of mail traffic going through your ISP's mail servers. Also, virus emails are much larger than your average email. This adds up to a major burden put on the mail server. If things aren't caught and taken care of quick enough, this alone can cause mail being received and sent by the customers to be very slow and delayed.

Second, companies consider virus laden emails coming in from the outside to be Spam. Therefore, if the virus traffic is not caught and taken care of right away you could be blacklisted from other mail servers. Blacklisted means that mail from your server will be rejected by the mail server of the company that blacklisted you. Then customers start to get upset that their emails to friends are being rejected. AOL will blacklist mail servers quicker than most, and unfortunately many people use AOL so an ISP will get a lot of complaints from their customers that can't email their friends on AOL.

New email viruses can be a network admin's worst nightmare. Luckily, we were able to keep things under control with our subscribers and so far very few of our subscribers have been infected with the virus.

I was thinking something along those lines about how it slows the speed of emails and thought it was harmful in that way, but I didn't know they can blacklist you and keep you from sending emails.