Mydoom Virus
The worst computer outbreak in history
This is the dangerous virus in history, why I said like that? it is the most dangerous virus because the damage of this virus is estimated as $38.5 billion or more. Mydoom virus is discovered in the month of January 2004. basically what will happen under this virus is, hijacking your computer and leaving after placing a backdoor. it's pretty dangerous because if they want something to do they will enter your computer using a backdoor.
how does it work?
when we talk about how it getting approach to our computers, this virus wants a door to enter our computer. for that, they are using phishing (spam messages). hackers sent mysterious emails like “I’m just doing my job, nothing personal, sorry” with an attachment, this attachment could be with bat, cmd, .exe, .scr or .zip extension. That attachment is the virus, the user intends to open this attachment because it seems important and urgent, so after you download the attachment you are a victim. the special thing about this virus is its fast, effective and most probably damage could be expensive.
Mainly this virus is used to do attacks like DDOS attacks on huge companies as an example from the support of this virus, hackers attacked bombard SCO Group, the company was not able to handle the traffic generated from infected computers, so it was crashed. it could be millions of computers, users don't even have an idea but the virus is running their computers, the computer is not showing warning messages or alerts because your computer is not functioning well, but if your computer is affected with this virus, the computer will slow down a little bit and some functions are not working properly.
how could you defend?
Use a proper virus guard which is able to work against this virus.
Do not open messages if you received them from an unauthorized person.
Be aware.
Make sure your windows OS is updated.
For further reference:-
Written by:- Chandimal Ekanayake — 2nd Year 2nd Semester Cyber Security Student — SLIIT