Virus Characteristics
-- Update March 13, 2004 --
Due to decreased prevalence, the risk assessment of this threat has been lowered to Low-Profiled.
-- Update March 2nd 4:38pm PST --
The risk assessment of this threat has been raised to medium due to increased prevalence.
If you think that you may be infected with Bagle.j, and are unsure how to check your system, you may
download the Stinger tool
to scan your system and remove the virus if present. This is not required for McAfee users as McAfee products are capable of detecting and removing the virus with the latest update. (see the removal instructions below for more information).
Note:
Receiving an email alert stating that the virus came from your email address is not
an indication that you are infected as the virus often forges the from address.
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This is a mass-mailing worm with the following characteristics:
- contains its own SMTP engine to construct outgoing messages
- harvests email addresses from the victim machine
- the From: address of messages is spoofed
- attachment can be a password-protected zip file, with the password included in the message body.
- contains a remote access component (notification is sent to hacker)
- copies itself to folders that have the phrase shar
in the name (such as common peer-to-peer applications; KaZaa, Bearshare, Limewire, etc)
Mail Propagation
The message-bodies are constructed with several parts, to effectively customize the email, to make it appear to be a legitimate warning notification. The details are as follows:
From :
(address is spoofed)
Subject :
- E-mail account security warning.
- Notify about using the e-mail account.
- Warning about your e-mail account.
- Important notify about your e-mail account.
- Email account utilization warning.
- Notify about your e-mail account utilization.
- E-mail account disabling warning.
Body Text:
Greeting -
- Dear user of (user's domain)
,
- Dear user of (user's domain)
gateway e-mail server,
- Dear user of e-mail server "(user's domain)
",
- Hello user of (user's domain)
e-mail server,
- Dear user of "(user's domain)
" mailing system,
- Dear user, the management of (user's domain)
mailing system wants to let you know that,
(Where the user's domain is chosen from the To: address. For example the user's domain for user@mail.com would be "mail.com")
Main message body -
- Your e-mail account has been temporary disabled because of unauthorized access.
- Our main mailing server will be temporary unavaible for next two days, to continue receiving mail in these days you have to configure our free
auto-forwarding service.
- Your e-mail account will be disabled because of improper using in next
three days, if you are still wishing to use it, please, resign your
account information.
- We warn you about some attacks on your e-mail account. Your computer may contain viruses, in order to keep your computer and e-mail account safe, please, follow the instructions.
- Our antivirus software has detected a large ammount of viruses outgoing from your email account, you may use our free anti-virus tool to clean up your computer software.
- Some of our clients complained about the spam (negative e-mail content) outgoing from your e-mail account. Probably, you have been infected by a proxy-relay trojan server. In order to keep your computer safe, follow the instructions.
Attachment explanation -
- For more information see the attached file.
- Further details can be obtained from attached file.
- Advanced details can be found in attached file.
- For details see the attach.
- For details see the attached file.
- For further details see the attach.
- Please, read the attach for further details.
- Pay attention on attached file.
Password information -
(if received as a ZIP file)
- For security reasons attached file is password protected. The password is "(five random numbers)
".
- For security purposes the attached file is password protected. Password is "(five random numbers)
".
- Attached file protected with the password for security reasons. Password is (five random numbers)
.
- In order to read the attach you have to use the following password: (five random numbers)
.
Closing -
- The Management,
- Sincerely,
- Best wishes,
- Have a good day,
- Cheers,
- Kind regards,
The (user's domain)
team http://www.(user's domain)
(Where the first part of the closing is selected from the list. The second part is always present.)
Attachment:
(May be .EXE .PIF or .ZIP)
- Attach
- Information
- Readme
- Document
- Info
- TextDocument
- TextFile
- MoreInfo
- Message
The virus copies itself into the Windows System directory as IRUN4.EXE. For example:
- C:\WINNT\SYSTEM32\IRUN4.EXE
It also creates a file IRUN4.EXEOPEN which may either be another copy of itself or a ZIP file (~13KB) to be sent in email.
The following Registry key is added to hook system startup:
- HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Software\Microsoft\Windows\
CurrentVersion\Run "ssate.exe" = C:\WINNT\SYSTEM32\irun4.exe
Like its predecessors, this worm checks the system date. If it is the 25th of April 2005 or later, the worm simply exits and does not propagate.
The worm uses the following icon, to make it appear that the file is a WordPad document:
This worm attempts to terminate the process of security programs with the the following filenames:
- ATUPDATER.EXE
- AUPDATE.EXE
- AUTODOWN.EXE
- AUTOTRACE.EXE
- AUTOUPDATE.EXE
- AVLTMAIN.EXE
- AVPUPD.EXE
- AVWUPD32.EXE
- AVXQUAR.EXE
- CFIAUDIT.EXE
- DRWEBUPW.EXE
- ICSSUPPNT.EXE
- ICSUPP95.EXE
- LUALL.EXE
- MCUPDATE.EXE
- NUPGRADE.EXE
- OUTPOST.EXE
- UPDATE.EXE
The worm opens port 2745 (TCP) on the victim machine.