Bagle Gets Around Zip Filters?Variants of the Bagle Windows worm continue to appear thick and fast, and one of the most recent versions already has workaround (jargon, programming) workaround - A temporary kluge used to bypass, mask or otherwise avoid a bug or misfeature in some system. Customers often find themselves living with workarounds for long periods of time rather than getting a bug fix. for an anti-virus countermeasure introduced by some vendors just one week earlier. Recent Bagle variants tried to get around virus scanners by putting the executable into a password-protected Zip archive, with the password included in the e-mail's body text. The idea was that the virus scanner could not open the file, but the would-be victim could. Some antivirus firms responded with features can detect when an incoming attachment is Zip-compressed and password-protected, then scan the body text for something that contextually looks like a password. Now Bagle.N, found Saturday, includes the password as text on a GIF GIF in full Graphics Interchange Format Standard computer file format for graphic images. GIF files use data compression to reduce the file size. The original version of the format was developed by CompuServe in 1987. image pasted into the body text, according to F-Secure Corp, meaning the earlier password-finding countermeasures will not work Bagle has been the most mutable mu·ta·ble adj. 1. a. Capable of or subject to change or alteration. b. Prone to frequent change; inconstant: mutable weather patterns. 2. , if not the most prolific, worm of 2004. The original appeared on January 18, and yesterday the sixteenth variant, Bagle.P, was found. Bagle is designed to turn innocent PCs into "zombie A computer that has been covertly taken over in order to perform some nefarious task. It is estimated that millions of PCs around the world have been compromised and, under the control of a third party, routinely transmit messages unbeknownst to the user. " proxies, presumably pre·sum·a·ble adj. That can be presumed or taken for granted; reasonable as a supposition: presumable causes of the disaster. for nefarious purposes. |
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