Panda Virus Alert - Bagel.A.Worm Alert Release #1

Panda Software reports the appearance of the Bagle.A worm Virus Alert, by Panda Software (http://www.pandasoftware.com) Glendale, CA - January 19, 2004 - PandaLabs has detected the appearance of a new worm called Bagle.A (W32/Bagle.A.worm). This malicious code is designed to spread rapidly via e-mail. Bagle.A reaches computers in an e-mail message with the subject: Hi, and following message body: Test =), (a series of random characters).  -- Test, yep. The name of the file attached to the message, which actually contains the worm's code, consists of a series of random characters, but always has an .EXE extension. This file is 15,872 bytes in size. The aim of Bagle.A is to spread rapidly by creating copies of itself, which could cause computer networks to collapse. However, this worm does not have any other destructive effects. Once it has been installed on a computer, Bagle.A looks for e-mail addresses to send to. It searches for these addresses in the files with WAB, HTM, HTML and TXT extensions stored on the affected computer. Once this is complete, the worm sends itself to the addresses found using its own SMTP engine. As Panda Software's international technical support network has already detected incidents caused by this worm, the multinational antivirus developer advises users to update their antivirus solutions, if they haven't already done so. Panda Software has already made the updates to its products available to users to ensure their solutions can detect and eliminate Bagle.A. Those whose software is not configured to update automatically should update their solutions from http://www.pandasoftware.com/. Users can also scan their computers using the free, online antivirus, Panda ActiveScan, which is available on the company's website at http://www.pandasoftware.com. For more information about Bagle.A, visit Panda Software's Virus Encyclopedia at the following address: http://www.pandasoftware.com/virus_info/encyclopedia. ABOUT PANDA SOFTWARE PLEASE ADD BOILERPLATE FROM LAST PRESS RELEASE SENT VIA PR NEWSWIRE FOR MORE INFORMATION: Alan Wallace