Bugbear tops virus threats

Anti-virus software vendor Symantec found that Bugbear.B--which the company believed was discovered 4 June—was the top ranking threat both in Asia Pacific and globally.

Virus threats having been of growing concern to companies, with reports of a new variant of the Sobig worm surfacing late last week. This was coupled with other potential threats, such as a a hacker defacement contest slated to kick off this Sunday.

David Banes, regional manager for Symantec's Asia-Pacific security response team, told iTnews that it was generally seeing an increase in the frequency and number of worm variants. “If you take Sobig, for example...we're already up to 'e',” Banes said.

Patching was the main concern for companies, he said. “You wouldn't get [worms] like Bugbear spreading if you were patching properly,” Banes argued.

A mass-mailing worm, Bugbear.B is also able to spread through network drives.

“An interesting feature of Bugbear.B is that it contained a list of more than 1,300 targeted bank domain names worldwide,” Banes said. “If Bugbear.B determined that the default email address was from an affected system in a bank, then it would try to gain control of the machine in an attempt to steal passwords from these banking organisations.”