Virus-infected e-mails unleashed Monday continue to infiltrate WiscMail and international e-mail servers at a rapid pace.
Among 142 countries, CNN.com reports one in 12 e-mails to be infected with the virus commonly dubbed \MyDoom"" or ""Novarg.""
Kim Milford, information security manager for UW-Madison Division of Information Technology, presumes almost all users of Wiscmail received these e-mails but only about five percent are infected with the virus, attributing this to a filter DoIT installed Monday.
""If it's an infected machine, it can go and look at the address book in Outlook and it just ... starts sending to everyone in that address book,"" Milford said.
Attachments containing the virus have common subjects such as ""status,"" ""hello"" and ""hi,"" according to Milford.
Once the virus gets into the computer, it puts a zombie on the machine which tells the computer to go to a certain Web site at a certain time and date, Milford said.
Within the WiscMail system, students report receiving infected attachments addressed to student class lists.
""I received an e-mail saying that somebody was confused as to why we were sending an e-mail that, when I saw it, we had not sent,"" UW-Madison Scandinavian studies Professor Scott Mellor said, adding he received about 200 suspicious e-mails himself.
Similarly, UW-Madison freshman Courtney Books came upon e-mails with subject headings containing random letters and numbers, which she immediately deleted.
""There was one with like a normal name ... so I thought that that might be for a class and opened it up and it said that a virus had been entered into my computer,"" Books said.
If people accidentally open these attachments, Milford suggests they install Symantec anti-virus program, offered free to students on the DoIT Website. For people who have not encountered the virus, Milford suggests updating to the latest version of Norton Antivirus to protect their computer from getting ""MyDoom.""
""We got a little heads up on it because our peers in London were dealing with it a couple hours before we were. So, that really helped us to make sure our filter was in place in e-mail,"" Milford said.
She said the ""MyDoom"" infiltration in the Wiscmail system should be cleared up by the end of the week.
