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Mimail Becomes Fourth Most Damaging Virus

Even though the Mimail virus didn’t achieve the threat level or the media coverage that its malicious code cohorts, Sobig and Blaster, did a few months ago, it has become the fourth most damaging virus of all times. The worldwide economic damage caused by the Mimail family has surpassed $9 billion, when factoring in business […]

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Sharon Gaudin

Nov 24, 2003

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Even though the Mimail virus didn’t achieve the threat level or the media coverage that its

malicious code cohorts, Sobig and Blaster, did a few months ago, it has become the

fourth most damaging virus of all times.

The worldwide economic damage caused by the Mimail family has surpassed $9 billion, when

factoring in business interruptions and productivity losses, according to London-based mi2g,

a digital risk management company. Mimail now is only preceeded by Sobig, Klez and Yaha. The

Swen virus has been bumped to fifth place.

”Five years ago, hackers and virus writers carried out most of the attacks to demonstrate

intellectual prowess,” says D.K. Matai, executive chairman of mi2g. ”The metamorphosis in

motives has definitely been towards financial fraud and extortion activity.”

Mimail-I and Mimail-J are viruses aimed at carrying out a ”phishing” scam. Both try to

induce users of PayPal, owned by eBay, to enter their credit card information into a pop-up

window. The victim has to click on an attached program to activate the virus and Mimail-J

also asks for a Social Security number and mother’s maiden name, two key pieces of data

essential for identity theft.

Mimail-J is the 10th variant of the virus that first appeared in August.

The Mimail virus hit the wild in August, which has been designated as the worst month in

history for digital attacks. Sobig-F and the Blaster worms created great turmoil in the

on-line world.

In August, viruses, along with overt and covert hacker attacks, caused $32.8 billion in

economic damages, according to another report from mi2g, The Sobig virus alone accounted for

$29.7 billion of economic damages worldwide.

Sobig has held onto its top position on the infamous list, causing an estimated $36.1

billion in damages. Klez, holding the second ranking, has accounted for $18.9 billion in

damages, and Yaha has taken third place with $11.1 billion worth of damages.

The recent Mimail viruses are a refined version of an online scam known as ”phishing” in which malevolents send emails that appear to come from a major bank or company. The criminals’ email directs the user to divulge personal identity information. In most cases of similar banking scams, victims have been directed to enter their data into a look-alike Web site. Mimail’s use of an executable program that collects and sends the data back to the attacker makes it difficult for victim companies to stop the scam swiftly by calling on internet service providers (ISPs) to shut down a particular web site.

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SG

Sharon Gaudin

Sharon Gaudin is a veteran technology journalist who has worked for the likes of Computerworld, InformationWeek, and Datamation. She has covered everything from the cloud, security, and social networking to software development, robotics, artificial intelligence, and hardware.

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