14 DAY TRIAL // Several new worms have been reported everywhere yesterday including a variant of Sober, which has so far been detected by many major antivirus firms. The guest list continues with a variant of Bropia and a new MyDoom - taking the total number of variants of that worm beyond 50. Even if Monday was a busy day for antivirus companies, none of the worms detected is any real concern for either corporate or home users.
The Sober.K worm is a mass-mailer and some versions intercepted by UK email security firm MessageLabs pose as a virus warning urging users to download a patch to protect them from the very worm they install by doing so. At least this variant has the common decency to announce itself when entering a PC and the email message carrying the K variant has a very explanatory subject line: "Alert! New Sober worm".
Other messages include references to illegal websites visited and also the notorious Paris Hilton sex video. MessageLabs spotted this virus in Germany first, and a few hours later it had blocked over 1,400 copies with subject lines in both German and English.
MyDoom variant .BA embarks on its third foray through the alphabet according to common naming policy employed by Symantec and Trend. Others antivirus firms are calling it .AX, .AZ and even .BC as each new variant is named alphabetically.
Bropia.J (or Bropia.I) is also spreading in small numbers with the capability to spread via MSN Messenger, according to an alert on the Computer Associates Virus Information Centre.
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