Anti-virus vendors warn that a new Internet worm is spreading fast via e-mail. The worm, Bagle-B, could allow hackers to gain remote access to infected computers.
Netxactics, local Sophos distributor, says it has received several reports of the worm spreading in the wild.
MediaWeb quotes Justin Stanford of 4DDS as saying the first payloads of Bagle-B hit SA yesterday afternoon. According to Stanford, the virus seems to be avoiding Hotmail, Microsoft or msn.com e-mail addresses.
Sophos says the Bagle-B worm, also known as Tanx-A, arrives in an e-mail with the subject line "ID" followed by various random characters and the message text "Yours ID". An attached .exe file has a randomly generated filename. If run, a remote access component allows hackers to gain remote access to infected computers.
The worm harvests e-mail addresses from infected PCs and, when forwarding itself to other computer users, spoofs the "From:" field using addresses found on the computer`s hard drive.
"Bagle-B tries to deceive computer users by spoofing the sender`s address, but the worm is easy to spot because of its distinctive subject line," says Brett Myroff, CEO of Netxactics.
"The message is simple - don`t open unsolicited e-mails and don`t automatically trust e-mails that appear to come from a known contact. Practising safe computing and blocking executable files at the e-mail gateway will prevent infection from this worm."
Ryan Price, CEO of Y3K, local F-Secure distributor, notes that Bagle-B is spreading fast because it was initially mailed to a large number of users in the same way as spam messages. Another reason for the spread, says F-Secure, is that the mail message appears to be an innocent audio file.
F-Secure has raised Bagle-B to Radar level one alert, which is the highest alert level. This is already the third Radar level one alert this month, the two previous ones being Bagle-A and MyDoom.A.
Like its predecessor, Bagle-A, this worm has a built in `dead date` and has been designed to fall dormant on 25 February 2004.
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