'Worm war' behind recent virus releases

'Worm war'
Antivirus experts have identified new versions of three major e-mail worms and say that a "war" between rival virus writers may be to blame for the rash of outbreaks in recent weeks.New versions of the Mydoom, Netsky and Bagle worms have all appeared on the Internet in the past 24 hours. Antivirus researchers have uncovered text messages in two of the worms that suggest a battle is under way among virus writers, antivirus companies said today.

All three variants resemble their predecessors, which spread in e-mail messages with vague-sounding subjects using infected attachments such as .zip, .exe, or .pif files. The viruses have their own Simple Mail Transfer Protocol engines and harvest e-mail addresses from infected computers, which are then targeted with infected mail, antivirus companies said.