Watchdog-attacking Bagle ramps up
Rather than a mass-mailing worm, BagleDl-L is a Trojan horse that damages security applications and attempts to connect with a number of Web sites. It has been sent via spam lists to millions of addresses in the past 12 hours, said security company McAfee, which has upgraded it to a "medium" risk. The new variant could also have boosted overall Bagle traffic, which has increased five times in the past 24 hours, e-mail security vendor Postini said Tuesday.
The attempt to disable security protection could expose systems to a variety of threats. "Any Trojan horse which turns off your antivirus or firewall can open you up to further attack, even by very old viruses," Graham Cluley, senior technology consultant for Sophos, said in a statement.
Unlike a mass-mailing worm, the Trojan does not self-propagate, but the security companies have highlighted it because a high number of e-mails containing it have been detected.
