COMPUTER users are being warned about a new virus which enables hackers to steal credit card numbers and online banking details.
The BugBear virus, which arrives by e-mail, was first spotted eight days ago and has now spread rapidly to more than 100 countries.
Alex Shipp, senior anti-virus technologist at e-mail filtering firm MessageLabs, said so far about 40,000 of its customers had been sent an e-mail containing BugBear.
"It started off fairly slowly but is rapidly increasing, and looks to be spreading at the same rate as the Klez virus did in the early stages, which became the biggest virus ever," Mr Shipp said.
He warned that the virus is difficult to spot as the email has more than 50 different catchlines, many of which seem plausible, such as Market Update Report, Announcement, Scam Alert and Membership Confirmation.
Indentification
One way of identifying it is looking at the size of the file attachment, which is usually 50,688 bytes, but some copies have been different sizes.
Mr Shipp said the virus not only enabled passwords and banking details to be accessed by the person who wrote it, but also by any hacker who knew about it.
So far MessageLabs has not heard of anybody who has had details stolen and used, but Mr Shipp said the writer had clearly designed the virus in a bid to steal money.
BugBear is thought to originate from Malaysia and believed to be the third virus the hacker has written.
Internet and telephone bank Intelligent Finance said so far none of its customers had been affected by BugBear. It added that customers could download free anti-virus software from its website. Tweet