Panda Software Says Mydoom.A worm Epidemic shows no signs of cooling

Panda Software Say’s Mydoom.A worm Epidemic shows no signs of cooling More than one and half million infected e-mails are in circulation, and early statistics report 150,000 computers infected globally Glendale, CA - January 27, 2004 - The number of computers infected by the Mydoom.A worm is rapidly increasing. According to data collected by the online antivirus scanning tool Panda ActiveScan, this new worm has infected four times more computers than Downloader.L, the second most frequently detected virus. According to data collected by Panda Software’s technical support team, some companies are reporting that their antivirus programs are blocking up to 3,000 Mydoom.A infected e-mails per minute trying to enter their network. First estimates indicate that there are more than a million and a half e-mails infected by the worm now in circulation, and up to this point more than 150,000 computers around the world have been affected. However, these figures are likely to increase. This data would appear to confirm forecasts that Mydoom.A may cause one of the most serious epidemics ever. Mydoom.A. is designed to attack and saturate networks of any size. It also creates a backdoor in the infected computers which could allow hackers to steal or compromise key corporate data. For this reason, in order to stop Mydoom.A from continuing to spread through computers without adequate antivirus protection installed, Panda Software offers all users its free PQremove tool, which detects and eliminates Mydoom.A from infected computers and restores any changes this worm has made to the system configuration. The utility can be downloaded from http://www.pandasoftware.com/download/utilities. Panda Software also provides a free online tool Antivirus Checker, which can be used to verify the antivirus protection status of a computer. This tool specifies whether an antivirus is installed, which one and whether it has been updated, so a user can determine if they are fully protected. Antivirus Checker is available at: http://www.pandasoftware.com/protected. Users can also detect Mydoom.A and other malicious code by conducting a free computer scan using Panda’s ActiveScan online scanning tool, which is available on the company’s website at http://www.pandasoftware.com/. Panda Software advises users to update their antivirus solutions, if they haven’t already done so. The company has already made the updates to its products available to its clients to ensure their solutions can detect and eliminate Mydoom.A. Even though Panda Software’s products can be automatically updated every day, those whose software is not configured to update automatically should update their solutions from http://www.pandasoftware.com/. More detailed information on Mydoom.A is available from Panda Software’s Virus Encyclopedia About PandaLabs PandaLabs works round the clock in search of new viruses and threats that could appear in any corner of the globe or that are sent in by users who have found suspicious files. The PandaLabs team immediately scrutinizes every malicious code they receive, analyzing its characteristics and behavior. After completing these tasks, they develop detection and disinfection routines, which are then distributed, every day, to the users of Panda Software's antivirus products. As a result, the multinational's solutions against malicious code are always armed against any threat, however recent it may be. For more information: Alan Wallace [email protected] Tel. (818) 543-6909