Australia dodges Klez outbreak - News - Security

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This story was printed from ZDNet Australia.
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Australia dodges Klez outbreak

By Vivienne Fisher, ZDNet Australia
April 22, 2002
URL: http://www.zdnet.com.au/news/security/soa/Australia-dodges-Klez-outbreak/0,130061744,120264754,00.htm

In comparison to some other countries, Australia hasn't felt as great an impact from recent Klez worm variants.

Andrew Gordon, managed services architect at anti-virus software vendor Trend Micro, said it received quite a few calls about Klez on Saturday, but nowhere near as dramatic as the reports from countries such as North America and Europe.

The latest variant has a number of names, with some vendors calling it Klez.h and others Klez.k.

Stuart Palmer, managing director for Australia/New Zealand at Sophos, said Klez had been reasonably active, although not as bad as some of the other viruses and worms which were out last year, such as Nimda. Palmer said that in Australia it had seen a fairly low infection rate, although the incidence rate was still moderate.

According to Sean McDonald, a virus analyst at Sophos, it wasn't any more dangerous than other variants of Klez. He said what it refers to as the Klez-H variant was first detected in the morning on April 17.

Reports from the US have warned about the possibility that the latest variant of the Klez worm sometimes results in confidential information spreading with the malicious program.

Trend Micro's Gordon said the latest Klez variant had picked up the main engine from Klez.a, although it was a little bit more sophisticated because it has quite a few random subject tags.

Gordon said it had given the latest Klez variant a medium rating, because of its destructive nature.