08 Oct 2002
Mac users cannot be infected by Bugbear worm
Sophos technical support has received a number of calls from
users of Apple Macintosh computers concerned they may have been
infected by the W32/Bugbear-A worm.
W32/Bugbear-A, like some other recent worms such as W32/Klez-H and W32/Yaha-E, can forge the
From: and Reply-To: information in the email header. This means the
infected email may appear to come from someone who is not really
infected with the worm and has two possible consequences:
- If you receive an infected email and reply to the
apparent sender you are not communicating with the person
who really sent you the virus. For that reason, they may continue
to be unaware that they have a virus infection.
- If you receive an infected email and reply to the
apparent sender you may be telling someone who is not
infected that they are infected with a virus. This may result in
the recipient panicking that they are infected, and possibly taking
drastic inappropriate action, when they had no cause for
concern.
Users of Apple Macintosh computers, however, cannot be infected
by these Windows viruses.
Interestingly, some viruses (for instance, W32/Klez-H and W32/Yaha-E) have even
deliberately forged mail headers in order to pretend to have come
from anti-virus companies.
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 complete security solutions that are simple to deploy, manage, and use and that deliver the industry's lowest total cost of ownership. Sophos offers award-winning encryption, endpoint security, web, email, mobile and network security solutions backed by SophosLabs - a global network of threat intelligence centers.
Sophos is headquartered in Boston, US and Oxford, UK. More information is available at www.sophos.com.