In brief It's happened yet again. A new version of the Bagle Downloader is spreading like wildfire via email, according to email filtering firm MessageLabs. MessageLabs has intercepted almost 70,000 copies since the arrival of the virus at lunchtime on Tuesday. The virus appears to have originated from a Yahoo! group.

The as-yet-unnamed Bagle downloader variant drops a Trojan that attempts to download updated malware from a long list of locations. Windows users who activate the file attached in the email invoke the virus, which harvests email addresses it finds on the computer's hard drive. The virus then forwards itself onto the list of email addresses it has discovered in infected computer.

The virus typically spreads in email messages with empty subject lines and body texts. ®

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