WIRES:

Symantec Security Response – Netsky.B & Beagle.B

Thursday, 19 February 2004, 1:23 pm
Press Release: Symantec

W32.Netsky.B@mm

Due to an increase in submissions, Symantec Security Response has upgraded W32.Netsky.B@mm to a Level 4 threat. W32.Netsky.B is a mass-mailing worm that uses its own SMTP engine to send itself to the email addresses it finds when scanning the hard drives and mapped drives. This worm also searches drives C through Z for folder names containing "Share" or "Sharing," and then copies itself to those folders.

To date, Symantec has received a total of 720 submissions. Approximately 115 of these submissions have come from corporate customers. Submission rates for this worm have been increasing over the last 4 hours, averaging a rate of 40 per hour. As a comparison, total first day submissions for the recent Mydoom worm were 450. Sobig.F had an average of 1800 submissions per day.

Virus definitions are available at http://securityresponse.symantec.com/avcenter/venc/data/w32.netsky.b@mm.html

W32.Beagle.B@mm

Symantec is also monitoring activity on W32.Beagle.B@mm worm. Beagle.B was discovered on February 17 and categorized as a level 3 threat. To date, Symantec has received a total of 410 submissions with 56 coming from corporate customers. However, in the last 24 hours, submissions of the worm have decreased. Symantec is now averaging less than 5 submissions per hour for this worm, compared to 30 per hour yesterday.

Virus definitions are available at http://securityresponse.symantec.com/avcenter/venc/data/w32.beagle.b@mm.html

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