Worm Hits Sites Operated by Disney, Anti-Spam Groups

Internet sites operated by Walt Disney Co. and anti-spam organizations including the Spamhaus Project are being targeted by a new strain of the MiMail computer worm, security software makers said Tuesday.

The program, called MiMail.MM and discovered Monday, tells recipients to open a file and then tries to send a flood of e-mail to sites including Disney.go.com, Network Associates Inc. said on its Web sites.

The worm infects computers running several editions of Microsoft Corp.’s Windows, Symantec Corp. said on its Web site.

Previous versions targeted EBay Inc.’s PayPal payment service for the Internet. When a user clicks on a link in the attached e-mail, the program uses addresses from files on the computer to send messages requesting a credit card number to prevent delivery of a set of CD-ROMs with child pornography.

Shares of Disney, based in Burbank, fell 59 cents to $22.58 in New York Stock Exchange trading. Network Associates, based in Santa Clara, Calif., and the maker of McAfee programs, rose 94 cents to $14.40.

Symantec, based in Cupertino, Calif., and the maker of Norton programs, lost 83 cents to $32.98 on Nasdaq.

MiMail exploits a security flaw in Windows to find addresses and reproduce.

The worm attacked tens of thousands, and possibly hundreds of thousands, of computers earlier this year, without any malicious intent, security experts said.

The original worm may have been a test for a destructive program, experts said then. Redmond, Wash.-based Microsoft, the world’s biggest software maker, said in August that the program was harmless and offered patches to end the vulnerability.