14 DAY TRIAL // The digital enemies that attack vulnerabilities on some Microsoft Windows computers are already giving headaches to major companies, such as The New York Times Co., which had to take some computers off the Internet and install some security patches.
Another "injured" company was CNN, who reported several hundred computers brought down Tuesday afternoon in Atlanta and New York, but the backup system managed to prevent any major damages, according to spokesman Laurie Goldberg.
Other victims so far: ABC, General Electric, United Parcel Service and Caterpillar.
The specialists in antivirus software don't seem to be very concerned about the situation, though more than 10 big companies have been affected. So far, they say that even if there are already about seven worms with variants, those did not rise to the threat level of some famous viruses, like Code Red or Mellisa. Like that's a relief! They also seem to go only after computers within organizations, being less effective on individual computers.
Moreover, the worms are targeting 2000 Windows computers, which is about a quarter of the Windows machines. Zotob, Rbot and their variants fall under the classification of worm, an infection which installs itself wherever there's a weakness in the individual computer systems.
So far, Microsoft has put out a security patch, but nobody seems to have an efficient solution to the problem yet.