Sophos, a world leader in protecting businesses against spam and
viruses, is warning of a new worm called W32/Bagle-A, which has
already been spotted at a number of sites in Australia. The worm
arrives in an email with the subject "Hi", and contains a message
which looks like this:
Test =)
[random characters]
--
Test, yep.
Attached to the email is a program file with a random name. This
file has the icon of the Windows Calculator, and if you run it, the
calculator will indeed pop up on your screen - after the worm has
gone to work. The worm saves itself into your System folder under
the name "bbeagle.exe".
"The Bagle worm disguises itself as a 'techie-looking' test
email," warns Sean Richmond, Sophos's Support Manager for Australia
and New Zealand.
"The attachment it carries looks like the Windows Calculator,
and appears to behave like the calculator - but it isn't. You
should be wary of any programs delivered to you by email, even if
they seem to come from someone you know. If you are an IT techie
who likes to email programs around, you should get out of the
habit, as it sets low standards for your users."
Sophos has published information about and protection against
this worm.
Sophos recommends the use of email gateway software such as
Sophos MailMonitor and Sophos PureMessage, which can block all
programs, whether infected or not, in order to enforce safe
computing practices. Further guidelines for "safe hex"
are available from 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.