Yahoo! claims webmail worm now controlled

Yahoo! claims webmail worm now controlled

Search engine giant and operators of the world’s most visited website Yahoo! has claimed that they have finally contained the problem linked with the worm, which was affecting the users using their free webmail service.

The company said in a statement that they have contained this program, which has already affected thousands of customers worldwide. The worm was dubbed Yamanner by the security agencies and infected the victim’s machine as soon as an infected mail was opened.

The worm later sent a copy of itself to all the people on the contact’s mail id list. Yahoo! added that only a very small fraction of its more than 200 million e-mail accounts were affected by this issue. I have personally got the infection messages from as many as four different buddies on my Yahoo! Messenger list.

Yahoo spokeswoman Kelley Podboy said in a statement: “We have taken steps to resolve the issue and protect our users from further attacks of this worm. The solution has been automatically distributed to all Yahoo Mail customers, and requires no additional action on the part of the user.”

The company is also advising the users of their webmail service to upgrade their antivirus software to clean the infection from their machines.