Googlebombed

In case you haven't heard, Google (and most of the other major search engines) were knocked completely out of commission for hours today, hit by a new variant of MyDoom. The BBC reports:

Net search engine Google appeared to resume normal service in the UK around 2000BST after a virus crippled its search engine.

Net security firms reported that the havoc seems to have been caused by a new variant of the MyDoom virus...

...Previous versions of MyDoom have launched distributed denial of service attacks (DDoS) on websites like Microsoft and software firm SCO.

Infected computers are used to bombard target websites with bogus data packages that utterly paralyse the sites.

"It does not appear to launch a traditional DDoS attack," said Graham Cluley, senior technology consultant for anti-virus firm Sophos, "and it is not just Google, but Altavista, Yahoo and Lycos."

"MyDoom uses a revolutionary new technique - I don't think we have seen this before," he added.

The new MyDoom variant searches infected machines for e-mail addresses, like other viruses before it.

But it also uses search engines to look for even more addresses in online forums and webpages.

This seems like as good a time as any to recommend Avast anti-virus software. It's free for home use, updates its virus definitions with amazing frequency, and provides more comprehensive protection than most antivirus programs. Avast watches all incoming and outgoing mail communication, while also covering P2P and IM traffic at the same time. Found some worms on both of my PC's, laying dormant in wait. McAfee never even noticed them. A co-worker found six instances on his home machine after running an Avast scan. Highly recommend it.