Norman Data Defense Systems yesterday issued an high risk alert about the email worm W32/MyDoom.A. Today the company strengthens these alerts even further. The company repeats its recommendation to download an antivirus program and/or to update installed programs’ virus definitions files.

To assist those already infected, or who may be infected at a later point in time, Norman has published a free tool to remove MyDoom.A. The program is available from the company’s web site.

Today one may observe that the worm seems to top all previous malicious programs with respect to propagation. The epidemic so far indicates that MyDoom.A is spreading faster and that the infection rate is higher than what the IT community experienced with Sobig.F, which caused extensive damage and huge costs in August last year. One may experience effects from the MyDoom.A epidemic by the fact that web pages are slow to load, and emails use a long time to reach the recipients, due to heavy Internet load and full email servers.

The tool that is now available from Norman’s web site deletes infected files and clean the settings made by MyDoom.A. Norman recommends all who suspects that they are infected, to download and run this free tool. Note that the tool will remove the worm, but it will not prevent reinfections. It is therefore imperative to have an updated antivirus program installed on your computer.

In order to avoid being infected, Norman again stresses that one should not open emails and attachments when sender and content are not known.

For further information, see www.norman.com.

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For further information, please contact

Eirik Amundsen, technical support manager, Norman Data Defense Systems,+47 41 53 97 31
Audun Lødemel VP marketing, Norman Data Defense Systems, +47 67 10 97 00