Bagle has less bite because of patches and education

David Banes, technical director of e-mail security firm MessageLabs in Asia Pacific, said the worm ="" href="http://www.zdnet.com.au/news/security/0,2000061744,39164991,00.htm" class="c-regularLink" target="_blank" rel="noopener nofollow">could have caused chaos, had it been released before users started patching regularly and software companies improved their product security.

"Now that all the different business regions have started applying their updates the numbers should start dropping off. The message [to patch and update your software] is getting through to a certain degree and the latest Windows XP service pack does a fairly good job of raising awareness that users need to patch," said Banes.

Ben English, security team leader at Microsoft Australia, said that because Bagle relies on human interaction and does not exploit a software vulnerability it was never going to be as big as Blaster or Sasser.

However, he said, other factors reducing the effect of the worm are the increasing number of people using Auto Update and the cutting down of vulnerabilities in the operating system.

"There are less vulnerabilities in Microsoft's software and people are far more rigorous in the way they patch their systems," said English.

According to English, there has been a "dramatic increase" in the number of people that use Auto Update - especially because Windows XP Service Pack 2 activates the Windows firewall and Auto Update by default.

"User education levels are increasing and that will limit the impact of this worm. Also, we are seeing a dramatic increase in the number of people that have Auto Update turned on. The consequences of not activating it are fairly significant," said English.