New Bagle spawns spam downloader
Computers infected with a well-known worm began downloading a new spam tool Sunday night used by hackers to send unwanted e-mail. Virus writers from the infamous Bagle spam gang began sending a new spamming tool Sunday night to thousands of hacked computers, said Mikko Hypponen, chief research officer for F-Secure, a security company based in Helsinki.
If a computer is infected with the Bagle virus, a hacker can download other malicious programs to the machine. In turn, those programs can send out spam to other machines without the knowledge of the user.
Once a computer is under their control, virus writers can upgrade the malicious software they have installed. Last night, machines infected with Bagle variants were downloading the new spam tool from a server in Slovakia hosting a real estate Web site.
