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07 Oct 2002

W32/Bugbear-A continues to cause problems

A week after its first appearance the W32/Bugbear-A worm continues to cause problems. Sophos reports that a large number of computer users are continuing to call its support department requesting information about how to protect against the worm and clean-up infections.

"We have seen a spurt of new activity as people have returned to work on Monday morning and opened their email. We have also seen reports from many home users who used their unprotected computers at the weekend," said Graham Cluley, senior technology consultant at Sophos. "Computer users need to remember that viruses are a problem every day of the year and either get in the routine of regularly updating their protection or put mechanisms in place to automate their anti-virus updates. Updated anti-virus combined with safe computing common sense are hard for viruses to beat."

Companies are advised to consider solutions like Sophos Enterprise Manager which can help automate protection updates inside a business.

Sophos released protection against the W32/Bugbear-A worm on Monday 30 September, 15:42 GMT. Customers who were using Sophos MailMonitor for SMTP's threat reduction technology were capable of protecting against W32/Bugbear-A in advance of this time.

Sophos has made available a free disinfection tool which can be used by non-customers as well as existing Sophos customers.

About Sophos

More than 100 million users in 150 countries rely on Sophos as the best protection against complex threats and data loss. Sophos is committed to providing security and data protection solutions that are simple to manage, deploy and use and that deliver the industry's lowest total cost of ownership. Sophos offers award-winning encryption, endpoint security, web, email, and network access control solutions backed by SophosLabs - a global network of threat intelligence centers. With more than two decades of experience, Sophos is regarded as a leader in security and data protection by top analyst firms and has received many industry awards.

Sophos is headquartered in Boston, US and Oxford, UK. More information is available at www.sophos.com.