Computing and Network Services was notified early Tuesday of a computer worm, dubbed ?Mydoom,? ?Novarg? or ?WORM_MIMAIL.R,? circulating rapidly around the Internet.
The worm, which affects Microsoft Windows-based machines only, is received in the form of an e-mail with random senders? addresses and subject lines. The body of the e-mail varies, but most include an error message, such as ?The message cannot be represented in 7-bit ASCII encoding and has been sent as a binary attachment.?
A minimal number of campus computers have been affected so far. CANS is currently updating unaffected machines over the network to prevent them from infection. At this time, all ?@towson.edu? e-mail addresses have been blocked from the worm, but other e-mail providers (e.g., Hotmail, Yahoo, Comcast) may not provide protection. If you have a computer that has already been affected, please shut down your machine and contact the CANS Help Center, x4-5151 or {helpcenter@towson.edu}.
Users should install the latest McAfee AntiVirus update, available at {http://www.towson.edu/cans/faculty/downloads/virus.asp}, before logging into the campus network. In addition, keep the following precautions in mind:
