Just as the Lunar New Year celebrations are coming to a close, many computer users in China are waking up to e-mail boxes full of trouble.

Internet experts warn that a new worm, called Mydoom, has been behind a rapidly growing number of infection cases since its emergence less than a week ago. The virus first began wreaking havoc in Latin American countries. Up till now, the number of computers hit by the virus in China has reached 200,000.

The new worm is also known as Novarg, or Shimgapi. Experts say this worm spreads via the Internet in the form of Windows files attached to infected messages. The worm is activated only if the user opens the archive and launches the infected file by double-clicking on the attachment. When executed, the worm fill the Window's Notepad with garbage data, beginning the replication process.

Mydoom is also programmed to carry out Denial-Of-Service attacks on www.sco.com on February 1. The virus is programed to stop functioning on Sunday, February 12.

Russia may be source of Mydoom

A leading internet computer anti-virus expert says the recent "MyDoom" bug could have originated in Russia.

Yevgeny Kaspersky, head of Kaspersky Labs in Moscow, says some computers, from which the virus originated, are located in the country. He also expressed fears the Internet could be used by terrorists in the future. The MyDoom virus spreads by e-mail and causes infected computers to launch an electronic attack against the Microsoft corporation's web site. Microsoft says it will pay US$250-thousand to anyone who helps find the author of the virus.

(CCTV February 2, 2004)