In case you've been under a rock, there's a new computer virus in town, the MyDoom or Novarg virus.

The virus--known as MyDoom, Novarg and as a variant of the Mimail virus by different antivirus companies--arrives in an in-box with one of several different random subject lines, such as "Mail Delivery System," "Test" or "Mail Transaction Failed." The body of the e-mail contains an executable file and a statement such as: "The message contains Unicode characters and has been sent as a binary attachment."
"It's huge," said Vincent Gullotto, vice president of security software maker Network Associates' antivirus emergency response team. "We have it as a high-risk outbreak."
In one hour, Network Associates itself received 19,500 e-mails bearing the virus from 3,400 unique Internet addresses, Gullotto said. One large telecommunications company has already shut down its e-mail gateway to stop the virus.
Once the virus infects a Windows-running PC, it installs a program that allows the computer to be controlled remotely. The program primes the PC to send data to the SCO Group's Web server, starting Feb. 1, a virus researcher said on the condition of anonymity.

As always, update your AV software; if it hasn't been automatically updated yet, then manually go out and grab the current signature file and engine. Etc.

UPDATE: The following is from the NAI AV site:

This is a mass-mailing and peer-to-peer file-sharing worm that arrives in an email message as follows:
From: (spoofed email sender) Subject: (Varies, such as)
- The message cannot be represented in 7-bit ASCII encoding and has been sent as a binary attachment. - The message contains Unicode characters and has been sent as a binary attachment. - Mail transaction failed. Partial message is available. - Error - Status - Server Report - Mail Transaction Failed - Mail Delivery System - hello - hi

More info is also available at Symantec's site.

Filed under :: Spam
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Or, you could get a Mac!

:D

Somebody had to say it.

I'd love to have a Mac except for two things: 1) They're still too damned expensive for what you get and 2) I'd have to wait another year on average before I got to play any of the hot game titles that come out for the PC. If I weren't a gamer I'd consider a Mac, or at least switching to Linux. I think OS X is da bomb, but I'm not giving up Call of Duty to use it.

Back on topic for a moment, I've been getting bounced mails from my email address being spoofed hourly for the last day or so. Awful lot of unprotected machines out there.

Yeah, I noticed a lot of spoofed mail from me bouncing "back" last night, too.

As far as Macs go -- take whatever comfort there may be in being a smaller target. I'm not that huge of a Microsoft fan, but if Apple had 90% of the desktop share, sure as shootin' there'd be more viruses written for OS X.