Conventional wisdom claims March comes in like a lion and goes out like a lamb. But with new versions of the Bagle e-mail worm and a virulent new form of Netsky virus, March's arrival is looking more like a worm.
Five new versions of Bagle appeared over the weekend, as did a new version of Netsky that is spreading rapidly on the Internet and generating a huge volume of virus-infected e-mail messages.
According to security experts mi2g, virus activity caused as much as $83bn in economic damage in February.
With numerous variants of MyDoom, Doomjuice and NetSky causing havoc over the wires, the shortest month of the year looks set to be one of the largest in terms of virus impact.
A new, fast-spreading version of the Mydoom worm destroys files on computers worldwide as it increases attacks via e-mails, Finnish computer security experts warned Thursday.
The "Mydoom.F" worm, discovered on Feb. 20, has so far infected about 5 percent of all Internet e-mail traffic, said Mikko Hypponen, director of research at a leading antivirus company F-Secure.
Security experts issued fresh alerts over a new, file-deleting version of the MyDoom e-mail worm that was targeting computer users with greater ferocity Wednesday.
The new outbreak, known as MyDoom.F, emerged late last week and has been gathering steam ever since.
The virus is programmed to infect personal computers and use them to unleash a crippling digital barrage known as a denial-of-service attack on select Web sites belonging to Microsoft Corp. and the Recording Industry Association of America (RIAA).
A new worm is targeting users of the ICQ instant messenger by tricking them into clicking on links delivered via IM, security experts said Tuesday.
About 50,000 machines have been infected with the Bizex worm, said Moscow-based Kaspersky Labs. The security firm called outbreak the first global epidemic among ICQ users.
The MyDoom Internet virus and the Bagle-B worm are only a taste of viruses, worms and Trojans set to appear in the coming year - effectively representing the tip of the iceberg as far as destructive capability is concerned.
This is according to Zea Silva, security business unit manager at independent IT solutions provider First Technology, who says that the speed with which MyDoom spread across the world was what made it so destructive.
A new, more dangerous version of the Netsky worm is making the rounds on the Internet.
The bug, which goes by the name Netsky-b or Moodown-b, is a modified version of NetSky-a that surfaced earlier this week. Initial ratings from the likes of Symantec, Network Associates and F-Secure suggest that the malware is a medium- to high-grade threat; and early reports say that the worm is spreading quickly.
A second strain of the Bagle worm that appeared last month has been detected on home computers.
The original Bagle worm worried some experts because it was programmed to stop working after a specific date. Some experts believed this indicated that Bagle_A was released only to test how quickly it would spread and that another incarnation witha more deadly payload would soon appear.
A VIRUS that opens computers to hackers has begun to spread via e-mail accounts.
The virus, named Bagle.B, is a version of the Bagle virus that appeared last month. Anti-virus experts have warned it is more effective than its parent and spreading rapidly.
Bagle.B arrives in an e-mail with the subject "ID (random numbers) . . . thanks" and has an executable file as an attachment. If opened, the virus infects the computer, sending itself to stored e-mail addresses and opening the Microsoft Windows Sound Recorder in an attempt to disguise what it is doing.
A new mass-mailing worm is preparing to spread, according to monitoring firm MessageLabs
Email-filtering company MessageLabs has issued an early warning to antivirus vendors that a new mass-mailing worm may be on the march. The anti-virus community had about eight to 12 hours, starting from about 1 p.m. today (2 a.m. GMT) to prepare for the suspected new worm, according to MessageLabs. The filtering company says the timeframe is based on the head-start its vigil over email systems gives it in comparison to traditional antivirus vendors.
