Bugbear-B infections drop

Anti-virus software vendor Sophos has warned that because the Bugbear-B virus contains a keystroke logger it could allow confidential information—such as passwords and credit card details—to be stolen from infected PCs.

While he still warned of the potential impact the virus could have on organisations that hadn't put protection in place, Sean Richmond, technical support manager at Sophos Australia, said that its UK office had seen a greater number of infections than in Australia.

“[There's] still a lot of people detecting it in Australia but [it's] a lot more stable and a lot lighter load than it was last week,” Richmond said.

Similarly, Allan Bell, marketing director at anti-virus software company Network Associates, said it had found that while the reported number of infections was generally declining and had dropped over the weekend, they had picked up a bit again on Tuesday.

Bell described Bugbear-B as an updated version of the original Bugbear virus that appeared about 18 months ago. While many large organisations won't reveal how viruses impacted their networks, one Australian company had stopped 700 copies of Bugbear-B at the gateway, Bell said.

He described Bugbear-B as a continuation of a trend over the past couple of years, where viruses had become more complicated and used multiple techniques to infect a computer system.