The massive publicity surrounding the recent
A and B variations of the MYDOOM virus should have for-warned most people that it
is important that they update their anti-virus definition database regularly.
One trend in recent high-profile viruses is
that they now tend to be designed to produce extremely large quantities of
e-mail traffic, which significantly slows down the entire network, and the mail
systems generally, or to orchestrate an “attack” on a specific web site or
sites (by bombarding the site with requests for information in such large
numbers that the site just stops responding and fails). This is known as a
“Denial of Service” attack.
In any event, we would recommend that you
ensure that your anti-virus software is updated at least once every week – even
more frequently if possible. Some anti-virus software now includes automatic
updating facilities that can initiate an update in the background, almost
without you knowing.
However, despite the publicity, many
millions of computers across the world were affected by MYDOOM. You have the
most up-to-date virus definitions on your PC haven’t you?
