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MyGrant Worm Spreads in Academia
Tuesday, February 3rd, 2004 01:46 amSolri News Agency
E-mail servers in .edu domains have been groaning under the weight of a new worm know as MyGrant. Like the recent MyDoom and classics like the Love Letter worm, it spreads as a result of unsuspecting computer users opening an e-mail attachment. This is a particularly common problem in academia, where many professors have only just learned how to open e-mail attachments, and react cantankerously to requests from system administrators that they avoid doing so.
Mails typically have subject headers like:
RESEARCH GRANT
CALL FOR PAPERS
TENURE TRACK POST
E.U. FUNDING AVAILABLE
HOT GRAD ASSISTANTS!!!!!
When the attachment is opened, it copies itself to the C: drive, then scans the contents of the "My Documents" directory, reading MS Word documents and deleting all citations. It will then e-mail them to a number of academic journals. It will also install a trojan on the infected computer which will launch a Denial of Service attack on the Modern Languages Association website on April 1st.
E-mail servers in .edu domains have been groaning under the weight of a new worm know as MyGrant. Like the recent MyDoom and classics like the Love Letter worm, it spreads as a result of unsuspecting computer users opening an e-mail attachment. This is a particularly common problem in academia, where many professors have only just learned how to open e-mail attachments, and react cantankerously to requests from system administrators that they avoid doing so.
Mails typically have subject headers like:
RESEARCH GRANT
CALL FOR PAPERS
TENURE TRACK POST
E.U. FUNDING AVAILABLE
HOT GRAD ASSISTANTS!!!!!
When the attachment is opened, it copies itself to the C: drive, then scans the contents of the "My Documents" directory, reading MS Word documents and deleting all citations. It will then e-mail them to a number of academic journals. It will also install a trojan on the infected computer which will launch a Denial of Service attack on the Modern Languages Association website on April 1st.
