Two years after the Code Red and Nimda worms spread across the Internet and yahoo faced the Denial of Service (DOS) attack everyone thought that at least big companies must have taken the appropriate action to stop such attacks.
The experts have noticed a poorly programmed MSBlast worm spreading worldwide. It has already affected more than 330,000 computers running Microsoft Windows 2000 or XP. My computer was one of them! I found that only when I followed the instructions mentioned on C|Net.
http://reviews.cnet.com/4520-6600_7-5063736.html

The site microsoft.com was largely inaccessible for about four hours on friday, August 15. The company said the denial-of-service attack was unrelated to the MSBlast worm. Was it just a co-incidence? or was it a part of MSBlast worm? I have just noticed that windowsupdate.com site isn't working anymore! And microsoft.com homepage has changed its design. There are more than 12 links from its home page referring to the virus. The MSBlast has really shaken the mogul and has changed the net forever.

• The worm, started spreading early Monday, August 11.
• MSBlast does not spread via e-mail.
• It tries to connect a random IP address. If the IP address accepts the connection, it saves a file on the computer and use that computer to connect to a site. When a website receives a million hits per second, it can't handle the load of traffic and has to be shut. (Denial of Service)
• The worm is programmed to cause infected computers to send a flood of data to Microsoft's Windows Update service, (windowsupdate.com) starting August 15.
• The Update service suffered a different kind of denial-of-service attack on August 12 as people rushed to patch their PCs. The increased volume slowed, or prevented, access to the service.
• It scans for computers so widely that an unpatched Windows XP, 2000 or NT computer on the Internet could be infected in as little as 25 minutes. Windows 98 isn't affected by this virus.
• Home users with cable net are the most affected since their computers are always connected to the net and have an IP that doesn't change too frequently.
• MSBlast's first attack will last until the end of the year and in the latter half of each month for the first six months of 2004.
• The worm still hasn't reached the levels of Code Red II, which infected more than 300,000 servers in 10 hours.