Sigh, yet another worm virus is out. Usually I fight Bugbears in games, guess we all gotta watch out for them now in our e-mails!

Here is the Info:

It sounds cute and cuddly, but the latest Windows worm is really a monster.

Unlike other recent e-mail-borne maladies that simply clogged inboxes and networks, the Bugbear worm, also known as Tanatos, is coded to allow a malicious hacker complete control over infected computers.

Infected machines can be entered remotely through an application that allows the attacker to execute programs and view, copy, alter or delete any information stored on the infected computer.

The worm also has other data-stealing capabilities. It installs a program on an infected system that records all keystrokes and saves them into a file.

The worm then sends this file, which attackers obviously hope will contain passwords and other sensitive data, to a few e-mail addresses that are stored in encrypted form in the worm's code.

Bugbear was first spotted Monday. It infects only PCs running Windows operating systems, spreading through infected e-mail attachments. On computers that have not been patched (http://www.microsoft.com/windows/ie/...08/default.asp) for Internet Explorer's IFRAME vulnerability, the attachment can be executed automatically by Outlook as soon as an infected e-mail is previewed or read.

Bugbear also spreads quickly through computer networks once one connected machine is infected.

It's not easy to identify Bugbear. The worm arrives in e-mail bearing assorted subject headers. The name of the infected attachment can also vary but nearly always has the file size of 50,688 bytes.

Some of Bugbear's side effects are simply malicious and are probably due to a programming error in the worm's code -- the worm sometimes prints out hundreds of pages of nonsense text or its own binary code when a network that includes printers has become infected.

Bugbear also can pick up old e-mail messages stored on an infected system and send them to random addresses. This means that private e-mail could be disclosed to third parties.

The worm also attempts to shut down antivirus and firewall programs.

Some antiviral application vendors have released free tools to purge systems of the worm



More detailed info can be found at: http://www.f-secure.com/bugbear/

Thanks for the heads up!

Did you get your PM? I got the second book. Thanks again.

Thanks for the warning, ladyZekke. Have just updated Norton, not usre if it knows about the worm, but hey.

I never open attachments. That's the safe thing to do, I guess. <font color=lavender>Galadria</font> goes nuts when I go thruogh a whole list of 100+ emails and delete them all, without even reading them. I don't have that many people that I want to talk to. :D

Yep, i heard about this one, very disturbing thing.

Why on earth woudl I want to open up an E-mail about Bugbears anyway? And Tanatos! What kind of name is that for a WORM? If you're going to name it something call it "Plunchit" or "BeeHammer" or something...

Had a couple of infected e-mails this morning. PC-cillin zapped them without too much fuss [img]graemlins/thumbsup.gif[/img]

had one or two myself but Norton popped them no worries :D

Thanks for the warning. I have norton I would hope that it would pick it up. I better go do a update just incase.