Please update your anti-virus.. at least once every five years

The MyDoom worm. First seen in January 2004, it spread via email, opened a backdoor for spammers to gain access to your PC, and scoured your hard drive for more email addresses to forward itself onto.

It became widespread in no time, which was particularly concerning for software firm SCO – whose website it targeted with a distributed denial-of-service attack from infected Windows computers, seemingly as part of a civil war between different factions of the Linux community.

SCO offered a bounty of $250,000 for information leading to the successful arrest and conviction of the author.

As a later variant…

Read more in my article on the Naked Security website.

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Graham Cluley •   @gcluley

Graham Cluley is a veteran of the anti-virus industry having worked for a number of security companies since the early 1990s when he wrote the first ever version of Dr Solomon's Anti-Virus Toolkit for Windows. Now an independent security analyst, he regularly makes media appearances and is an international public speaker on the topic of computer security, hackers, and online privacy. Follow him on Twitter at @gcluley, on Mastodon at @[email protected], or drop him an email.