Security threats Toolkit

Evaman worm 'could break out' worldwide

Kristyn Maslog-Levis ZDNet Australia

Published: 05 Jul 2004 10:10 BST

A leading information technology security company has played down the risk posed by the new Evaman mass-mailing worm, but warned it could still be of nuisance value to Australian users.

Symantec senior technical director Tim Hartman said as yet, the security company rated Evaman only a level two threat (the highest being level five) and acknowledged the worm was not as widespread in Australia as previously expected.

"So far, we haven't seen huge submission numbers to it. We believe that there is a chance that it could break out bigger than it currently is but we don’t think its going to be huge," Hartman said.

In some media reports, the virus has been likened to mass-mailer MyDoom, which clogged mail servers and slowed down computers.

Evaman, which spreads to addresses found at the Web site email.people.yahoo.com, arrives as an attachment with a .exe or .scr extension. Infected emails generally have subject headings such as "failed transaction or "failure delivery".

Hartman said Symantec was currently waiting for the UK and US week to start in order to see the impact of the Evaman virus overseas.

ZDNet Australia's Kristyn Maslog-Levis reported from Sydney. For more coverage from ZDNet Australia, click here.