If your internet seemed a little slower today, or perhaps not even there at all at times, blame this: a major computer virus spread via email slamming servers at some heavy-duty websites. Affected sites include Google, NASA and Comcast. Computer World reports the virus is spread via a worm that comes attached to an email that typically has a subject line reading, "Here you have..." Anyone unwary enough to click on what looks like a link to a PDF embedded in the message is directed to a site that asks to download a screensaver file onto your computer. Users who are truly asleep at the wheel and click okay to install the screensaver are gifted with a worm that then propagates to the victim's contact list.
Admins who confronted this cyber-disaster today must have felt like it was 2001 all over again:
The worm is similar to the ILoveYou and Anna Kournikova worms, which spread in 2000 and 2001, and is a type of malware that has not been a major problem since around 2002 [...]
The worm's specific name is VBMania. It basically leads to a flood of spam, which then overloads servers, taking them offline.
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