The now infamous Bagle virus that we first reported on way back in January has been mutating for a couple of months now and the latest variant adds yet another twist.

Bagle-U was spotted in the early hours of this morning by anti-virus researchers at Sophos.

As per most viruses, Bagle-U spreads across the Internet via infected e-mails. However this time, there is no subject line and no text in the message body. To all intents and purposes, the email is completely blank. Apart from the attachment.

The attachment is quite damaging as it emails itself to every contact address it can find on your PC, it then (for some unknown reason) proceeds to open Microsoft's card game Hearts which is built into Windows. More worrying perhaps is that it also opens a back door into your PC that would allow a hacker to gain access to your computer without being detected.

Carole Theriault, Security Consultant at Sophos said,

"The Bagle variants just keep on coming. By opening a backdoor, this latest version compromises an infected user's confidentiality, while potentially turning the computer into a zombie for hackers to use."

As ever, we cannot stress enough, the importance of keeping your anti-virus software up to date.

Source: ITVibe