The mass-mailing MyDoom virus has become the fastest spreading program to date and the damage could continue for months or years.

The virulent program has flooded the Internet with e-mail messages bearing the program, doubling the time it takes most major Web sites to deliver a page. About one in every 12 messages being sent through the Internet contains the virus, said e-mail service provider MessageLabs. The previously most prevalent mass-mailing virus, called Sobig.F, only accounted for one out of every 17 e-mail messages.

Read more: CNet News (http://news.com.com/2100-7349_3-5148347.html?tag=nefd_lede).

Guess they missed the fact that the worm will be deactivated on February 12

The DDoS attack on SCO will end on Feb 12th, but the worm won't delete itself, so the possibilities for other attacks remain. At least that's how I understood it.

Well, it didn't take long:
MyDoom Variant Emerges, Targets Microsoft (http://www.reuters.com/newsArticle.jhtml;jsessionid=ADIZBONHXGPOYCRBAELCFFA?type=technologyNews&storyID=4231857)

SEATTLE (Reuters) - A variant of the MyDoom worm has emerged as the most devastating virus since last summer, and is likely to target Microsoft Corp.'s Web site, security experts said on Wednesday.

Since appearing earlier this week, the worm, also dubbed Novarg or Shimgapi, has infected computers across the globe by enticing users to open a file attachment that releases a program that potentially allows other attackers to gain unauthorized access.

The financial damage from the virus-like program -- from network slowdown to lost productivity -- is already being measured in the billions of dollars, according to anti-virus vendors.

The latest version of the worm is designed to flood Microsoft's Web site with requests for information in an attempt to bring it down, experts said on Tuesday. This strategy is similar to that of the first version, which targeted the Web site of the SCO Group Inc., the small software maker suing International Business Machines Corp. over the use of code for the Linux operating system, they noted.

more here (http://www.reuters.com/newsArticle.jhtml;jsessionid=ADIZBONHXGPOYCRBAELCFFA?type=technologyNews&storyID=4231857).