A computer worm called Beagle that may have been created by spammers to sniff out new e-mail addresses began to fizzle as it hit the United States on Tuesday.
But it had a frightening start as it spread quickly through Asia, Australia and Europe on Monday, creating widespread publicity for the worm, also called Bagle. Ironically, what may have crippled the latest worm was its fame. The advance warning let both anti-virus software makers and businesses in the United States prepare.
“It started fast, so people were very concerned, and anti-virus software was updated quickly,” said Carey Nachenberg, chief technology architect at Symantec, one of the country’s largest manufacturers of anti-virus software.
Because of that warning, the worm caused no problems at Atlanta-based EarthLink, the nation’s third-largest Internet service provider.
“We are always checking the warnings for a new virus or worm, and doing that gives us the opportunity to be prepared for it,” said Dave Blumenthal, an EarthLink spokesman. “So far, we haven’t seen much, if any, activity from it.”
The worm is similar to an earlier worm called SoBig. SoBig was considerably more dangerous, said Neel Mehta, a computer scientist with Atlanta-based Internet Security Systems.
He said Bagle, like SoBig, arrives as an e-mail attachment. It is programmed to gather e-mail addresses from a computer. Mehta said the worm also attempts to turn the infected PC into what technologists call a “zombie.”
Computer scientists interviewed Tuesday believe Bagle to be a middle-level threat at best.
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Edited by Lara Weber (lweber@tribune.com) and Chris Courtney (cdcourtney@tribune.com)
