How to check for Mydoom infection

Here is a little tip in case you were worrying about the latest and baddest worm to come out of some idiots head, for the rest of the world to have to deal with...

Look for the following file

ctfmon.dll

If you have it, congratulations, you are one of the infected unclean.

You can visit the Microsoft Security "What You Should Know About the Mydoom Worm" page and see for yourself. It details the ways in which these things get hold of you, and how you can minimize further exploitation from the nerdy non-girlfriended types out there.

So remember folks, ALWAYS have virus protection running and keep it up to date. Getting an email from someone you don't know is a no brainer, just delete it. Even if you get something that APPEARS to be from someone you DO know, if you did not specifically ask for, or expect it, then delete it. As they can quite easily send it again. They may not have even sent it, it could be the virus sending out emails to everyone in their address book.

It's good information chaps, read it!


Mydoom information from Symantec


Basic fact stuff

Viruses and worms are quite often delivered to the user in email attachments. You know when someone sends you a picture or another file, that is attached to the message? Well in some cases that attachment is infected with the virus, and as soon as you open it (by selecting open, view, or how ever your email program lets you see attached files) it goes to work behind the scenes messing up your computer, and in a lot of cases, thousands of others too!

To avoid being part of the problem, make sure you scan all incoming email with your virus scanner, and delete anything you did not expect or ask for. Most of that is called spam you know.

DOS or Denial of service attack - Someone repeatedly requests things from someone else's server, to bring it to a complete halt. In this case the worm will make infected machines send lots of requests to specific servers to try and flood them with requests and bring them to a grinding halt. Naughty

WORM - More naughtyness!

One final note. Viruses are ALWAYS man made. There is no natural source of computer illness anywhere. Some idiot with more time and acne, than brain cells has decided to ruin a lot of users days.