Circle I · Worms

The Demon Mydoom, Swiftest of the Cursed Postmen

Legend

First seen on 26 January 2004, Mydoom became the fastest-spreading email worm on record: for a while a sizeable share of all the world's email carried it. It opened a backdoor on infected PCs and launched DDoS attacks against SCO Group. Its author has never been identified, and in 2009 variants were dug up again to hit US and South Korean websites.

Exorcism

Cast it out by filtering executable attachments and suspicious archives at the mail gateway. Teach everyone not to open unexpected attachments, not even the ones that look like a delivery error, and keep antivirus signatures current.