Anti-virus experts at Sophos have identified a new computer
virus which complains of being bored and offers to play a musical
tune, whilst secretly opening a backdoor for hackers.
The W32/Aegi-A
virus hunts for executable files to infect on hard drives and
floppy disks, and opens a backdoor to allow remote hackers access
to affected Windows computers.
At certain times of the day, W32/Aegi-A will display a message
box saying "<Computer name> is very bored, play some music
?". If the user chooses "Yes", the virus attempts to infect the
local disk drives again.
"Some infected users may think that they have a joke program
installed on their PCs when they see the message about the computer
being bored," said Graham Cluley, senior technology consultant for
Sophos. "The good news is that a virus this obvious is never likely
to be as significant a threat as some of the fast-spreading
internet worms we have seen this year."
"The virus experts at Sophos were hoping this virus would liven
up their day with a merry tune when they were testing it under
laboratory conditions," continued Cluley. "Unfortunately the virus
wasn't telling the truth. It doesn't play a tune despite its
promise, and sadly has no multimedia capabilities at all."
Although only a small number of instances of the virus have been
sighted so far, Sophos recommends companies protect their computers
with a consolidated solution to thwart the
virus and spam threats as well as secure their desktop and servers
with automatically updated anti-virus protection.
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.