Bangalore: A new computer worm called W32/Mydoom has been rapidly spreading across the Internet, anti-virus software company Proland Software said today (Jan 27, 2004).

The Bangalore-based company said it received the first report of this worm today at 2.30 am, and ever since has been receiving innumerable reports of infections from around the world.

"In our assessment, this is a quick-spreading worm and the computer-user community is advised to take steps to protect themselves from this new threat," it said in a statement.

W32/Mydoom is a mass-mailing worm, the company explained. This worm infects Windows systems and spreads through e-mail and KaZaA P2P software. It can compromise computer security by allowing unauthorised remote access.

The statement said the worm arrives with a spoofed 'From' address and with a random 'subject'. The body of infected mail contains random text. It carries an infected attachment with any one of these extensions -- .exe, .pif, .cmd, .scr, zip.

"Mydoom worm is spreading rapidly enough to cause clogging of e-mail servers and degradation of networks of many companies," the statement added.