A WORM NAMED BAGLE-B could rank third in the world worm rankings behind its illustrious counterparts Sobig.F and Mydoom.A, virus busters are reporting. MessageLabs said Bagle.B had been spotted in 66 countries worldwide by this morning. The US and the UK have been hit hardest by the malevolent worm, the company warned. Germany comes a shaky third.
Sophos said the worm, also known as Tanx-A, spreads via email and arrives with the subject line "ID" followed by various random characters and the message text, "Yours ID". The attached .exe file has a randomly generated filename and can allow mysterious hackers to gain remote access to infected computers when run. The worm forwards itself through mailbox addresses and spoofs the "From:" field using addresses found on the infected hard drive. Snorre Fagerland, with Norwegian Internet security company Norman, told AFP, the worm is "very serious". On the scale of the most dangerous viruses, it gets a third place," he said.