Two new worm variants, W32/Bagle-AI and W32/MyDoom-N, were
released in the wild earlier this week, infecting Windows computers
around the world at a steady pace. The release of these new worms
ensures that these virus families continue to snag new victims with
each new variant. Sophos issued protection in the early hours of
Tuesday morning.
Bagle-AI is an email-aware worm which forges sender addresses to
confuse recipient over the worm's origin. Its subject and message
bodies give the impression that the attachment contains pictures,
music or information about certain animals, which may suggest that
the authors are targeting younger, less security-conscious computer
users. This variant of Bagle can sometimes arrive inside a
password-protected zip file, where the required password is in the
body text, increasing the perception that the email is
legitimate.
MyDoom-N, also email-aware, attempts to fool recipients into
thinking the message is an automated mail delivery communication.
It opens a backdoor onto the infected machine, allowing
unauthorised users to access the computer remotely without the
user's knowledge. Backdoors can be used by spammers, turning the
infected machine into a spam generator, or by hackers intent on
stealing sensitive or financial information about the user.
"With new variants of the Bagle and MyDoom families steadily
emerging and infecting computers around the globe, it's vital that
businesses keep their anti-virus software updated," said Sean
Richmond, Manager, Technical Support, Sophos Australia and New
Zealand. "Unlike humans, anti-virus software is not fooled by
social engineering tricks such as duping users into double-clicking
dangerous attachments."
Sophos's anti-virus products not only stop known viruses at the
gateway, but its threat reduction technology allows you to block
all executable code from being delivered to mailboxes, ensuring
that future email threats cannot reach the computers and infect
them.
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.