Bagle Resurfaces

Email security service company, MessageLabs has issued a warning about a new variant of the Bagle worm that is currently making its presence felt over the Internet. The company has reportedly intercepted about 8,50,000 copies of the worm already and has given it a "high outbreak" rating. The Bagle variant arrives as an empty e-mail with an attachment in a zip file. Users who open the attachment release a Trojan, which then attempts to download the actual virus from various locations. The virus then disables anti-virus programs, picks up email addresses from the user s computer and forwards itself to the acquired list. Also, on activation, the worm drops a copy of the executable file on to the infected computer, which further polls a vast list of URLs for the availability of mass-mailing component. MessageLabs said that the Bagle worm appears to have originated from an address claiming to be within Yahoo Groups. Since its origination in January 2004 the Bagle worm has reportedly had about 70 variants.