Sophos protects against Bagle worm inside password encrypted ZIP files

NetXactics, local Sophos distributor, has announced that the anti-virus experts at Sophos have added the ability to detect password-protected versions of the Bagle worm at the e-mail gateway.

An update issued on 4 March 2004 gives Sophos MailMonitor, Sophos PureMessage and other third-party e-mail gateway products which use the Sophos virus detection engine, the capability to detect the W32/Bagle-F, W32/Bagle-G, W32/Bagle-H, W32/Bagle-I, W32/Bagle-J and W32/Bagle-K worms, even though they can be transmitted inside a variably password encrypted ZIP file. Sophos detects the encrypted ZIP files as W32/Bagle-Zip.

"Sophos Anti-Virus at the desktop could already protect Sophos`s millions of customers around the world from infection by Bagle, but this update means the virus can be stopped even earlier at the gateway despite the malicious code being hidden inside an encrypted ZIP file," said Cornel Swart, national sales manager for NetXactics. "This development is a real benefit to corporate customers defending against the latest virus outbreaks."

Sophos Enterprise Manager and PureMessage users automatically received this protection at their next scheduled update.

Prior to this update, Sophos PureMessage and MailMonitor users were able to prevent the password-protected variants of the Bagle worm from entering their organisation by quarantining encrypted ZIP files at the e-mail gateway.