A new MyDoom worm variant is causing sporadic outages and slowdowns on Google, Yahoo and Altavista. This new computer worm uses web search engines to find victims. The worm searches victim's computers as well as internet search engines for e-mail addresses, and then sends an infected file to all the addresses it finds.
"Those search requests have been overloading the search engines," said Lloyd Taylor, vice president of technology for Keynote Systems Inc., which measures Web site performance.
The worm, Taylor said, was believed to be slowing performance on Google, AltaVista, a business of Overture Services Inc., and the Web site of Yahoo Inc. .
A Yahoo spokesman said the effect of the slowdown was limited solely to their search engine, and said the site was no longer feeling its effects. The other two search companies could immediately be reached for comment.
Computer security software vendors sent warnings to customers about the worm, which has been called MyDoom.m or MyDoom.o. The original MyDoom worm spread to hundreds of thousands of computers earlier this year.
Symantec Corp., a maker of computer security software, said it had received 250 reports about the new worm in two hours, on pace with the original MyDoom attack in January.
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