MyDoom statistics (was Re: Impending (mydoom) DOS attack)

Sat Jan 31 01:26:34 UTC 2004

On Fri, 30 Jan 2004, Mike Tancsa wrote:
> Are there any reliable estimates as to the amount of infected hosts out
> there?  Looking at my stats for email sent this week, I am seeing a 70:1
> ratio for mydoom.a as compared to Swen.a (the next most prevalent virus).
> Perhaps if we had some rough #s to work with we could start to approximate
> the range of traffic volumes we might see.

Reliable?  Not really.

McAfee's global virus statistics say 17% of all scanned computers were
infected by W32/Mydoom.a.

But I don't believe that number, because it is wildly different than
other metrics.  A lot of users have experienced the MyDoom file being
on their computer (e.g. through a mail message).  But I don't think
that represents the number of people which clicked and executed
the file, infecting their computer.