A new virus was detected on November 23rd and is said to be causing more damage than the infamous SirCam. The virus is called BadTrans and appears have spread to 34 countries. The UK is amongst the top three countries to have the most infections. MessageLabs, an anti-virus vendor, have reported 11,384 copies detected so far. MessageLabs newswrie reports: “ The virus is now widespread – we have stopped copies coming in from over 30 countries and it has replaced SirCam at No. 1 in MessageLabs’ daily top 10 which had occupied the number 1 spot for over 4 months”.
At the moment the virus only appears to be affecting Microsoft Outlook users. The infected email selects a subject line from the users inbox and ands the prefix “Re:”. The virus is released when the email is either read or previewed, users don’t even need to double click on the attachment to execute the virus. A variety of attachments have been reported, users are recommended to look out for the following titles:
S3MSONG.DOC.scr
Pics.DOC.scr
HUMOR.MP3.scr
Sorry_about_yesterday.MP3.pif
README.MP3.scr
ME_NUDE.MP3.scr
Fun.MP3.pif
NEWS_DOC.DOC.scr
docs.DOC.pif
HAMSTER.DOC.pif
SEARCHURL.MP3.pif
The virus manages to send confidential information such as passwords and credit card details from the infected users PC to the email address: [email protected]
Visit Microsoft's website to download a patch fix.
