The latest month has been characterised by the rise of several Mytob worms. So far more than 30 versions of this worm have been identified by Norman. Mytob is actually a combination of 2 different worms: One of them resembles the MyDoom worm that spreads through emails, and the other one has robot functionalities. If your computer gets infected by a Mytob you are likely to have zombies (sleeping robots) in your machine. These can be triggered and controlled by hackers to attack other machines or systems illegally. Your computer can be infected without you knowing it. The most common sign of infection is that your computer is working more slowly.

The proliferation of Mytob has been observed as spam mails. This is actually a fairly new trend among virus writers - their first proliferation attempt is done through spamming. Then after a while, you get the infected users.

The best way to avoid being infected by a Mytob or similar worms is not to open any attachments. The Norman Online Protection and other Norman anti virus products will stop these attacks because of the unique proactive capability of our SandBox. SandBox is a technology that detects new and unknown viruses and worms.