The W32/Bagle-A
worm which has been making its presence felt in thousands of email
inboxes worldwide is set to fall silent on Wednesday 28
January.
Virus experts at Sophos report that the Bagle worm, which has
dominated reports of virus sightings since its appearance just over
a week ago, has been designed to fall dormant on 28 January 2004,
and will no longer spread.
"One can only wonder why the worm's author has chosen to include
a 'self-suicide date' at which the worm would no longer spread, but
we're delighted to wish Bagle 'happy deathday' on Wednesday," said
Graham Cluley, senior technology consultant for Sophos. "We have
seen this kind of auto-destruct routine used in the past, most
memorably by the author of Sobig who released new
versions of his worm after the predecessor expired."
"It's possible the Bagle-A worm could continue to spread after
28 January, if some computers do not have their system clocks set
correctly," continued Cluley.
The Bagle worm traveled via email, posing as a test message. If
users launched the attached executable file the worm forwarded
itself to addresses on the infected hard drive and opened security
holes which hackers could exploit.
Sophos is headquartered in Boston, US and Oxford, UK. More information is available at www.sophos.com.