Latest Bagle variant bites back

Security experts have increased the risk assessment on the recently discovered W32/Bagle.aq@MM virus, also known as Bagle.aq, after finding that the infection is spreading more quickly than originally thought.

McAfee's Avert antivirus team said that it had decided to increase the newly identified Bagle variant's threat rating to medium.

The security firm said that, to date, it has received more than 150 reports of the virus, which is a mass-mailing worm that comes in the form of a Zip file.

Most of the reports have come from Brazil, Canada, France, the Netherlands, Taiwan and the US, with the majority of samples being found by home users rather than corporate users.

"Bagle.aq is a mass-mailing threat that contains its own SMTP engine to construct outgoing messages. It harvests addresses from local files and then uses the harvested addresses in the 'From' field to send itself," said Avert in a statement.

The virus also contains a remote access component which sends out a notification and copies itself to folders that have 'shar' in the name, including common peer-to-peer applications such as Kazaa, Bearshare and Limewire, Avert said.

More information on Bagle.aq and the cure for this worm can be found online at McAfee Avert here.