Australia escapes virus nightmare

Despite being faced with a virulent new version of Netsky and more "Bagles" than a New York deli, Australia's email systems have remained relatively untroubled by the mass of internet virus that have descended since the weekend. The national computer emergency response team, AusCERT, issued an advisory on the Netsky.D and new Bagle worms, but had done so more to "forestall" outbreaks in Australia, rather than a response to any local problems, AusCERT security analyst Joel Hatton said.

"At this point, we haven't seen much activity from these variants locally," Mr Hatton said.

Over the weekend, up to six new variants of the Bagle worm, tagged "Bagle.C" to "Bagle.H" appeared, joined by two new versions of "Netsky.D" and "Netsky.E".

"I can't remember the last time I'd seen so many variants of a worm come out so quickly," Computer Associates security spokesman Daniel Zatz said.

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