Antivirus companies are reporting the spread of a new variant of the mass-mailing PC virus known as "Bagle."
The latest version of the malicious software, which some experts refer to as an e-mail worm, is rearing its head worldwide. By Thursday morning, virus trackers in China, Japan, the United States and parts of Europe had reported instances of the threat.
Trend Micro said that the new offshoot, which it calls Bagle.AZ, is distributed as an e-mail attachment that cloaks itself as a delivery notification or confirmation. It uses "spoofed" e-mail addresses to appear to be from a known source, the antivirus software maker said.
The Tokyo-based company said it first discovered the virus on Thursday in Japan, well before the start of business hours in the United States. An almost identical version of the virus, dubbed Bagle.AY, also began appearing late on Wednesday, it said.
Upon infecting a computer, the Bagle variant harvests any available e-mail addresses and inserts copies of itself into the PC's shared folders, Trend Micro said. It then uses the infected system to distribute itself to additional computers.
Some antivirus companies, including software maker Symantec, refer to Bagle threats as "Beagle" worms. For instance, Symantec is calling the latest variant of the virus as W32.Beagle.AZ@mm.
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