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New worms, viruses lurking
21/07/2004 09:29 - (SA)
New York - A new breed of computer worms and viruses, modified by hackers to avoid detection, is spreading at an alarming rate across the internet, security experts said on Tuesday.
Most of the bugs appear to be new versions of old viruses and worms, some of which may have Trojan horse programs that can allow a hacker to take control of an infected computer to send spam or direct attacks.
Computer Associates said it discovered new variants of the Bagle and MyDoom worms, saying the number being detecting "is climbing alarmingly".
"With five Bagle variants in six days, several new techniques and the re-emergence of MyDoom, there is an intense threat environment across the internet," said Sam Curry, vice president at CA.
The original MyDoom.A worm in January infected up to one million computers worldwide in just a few days, clogging the internet and causing huge delays in the delivery of e-mails.
Another security firm, McAfee, meanwhile raised the risk assessment on the recently discovered Bagle.ai worm, a new version of a virus that has been in circulation for several months.
McAfee said the worm can use "spoofed" addresses that make it appear to be an e-mail from a known person, and may appear to have music or photo attachments.
"Users should be very wary and should most likely delete any e-mail containing" reference to "foto3 and MP3", "fotogalary and Music" and other attachments.
The Finnish security firm F-Secure said the worm "has a backdoor" to allow a hacker who created the code to "connect to the computer and execute arbitrary programs".
MessageLabs, an e-mail security firm, said it has intercepted more than 17 615 copies of the latest variant of Bagle.
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