New virus - AVG does not detect

Today I received an e-mail from the listowner of a mailing list I subscribe to. It looked like a warning saying my account had been suspended due to unauthorized access to it. The e-mail contained an attachment in the form of a ZIP file, and instructions to enter a supplied password.

I did not open the attachment, but wrote to the sender to ask if she did, indeed, the e-mail and to tell her I do not open unannounced attachments from anyone.

A little later, the listowner sent out a notice to the members letting them know the e-mail was due to a virus - that she did not send it knowingly. She supplied the following link from Symantec:
http://securityresponse.symantec.com/avcenter/venc/data/w32.beagle.j@mm.html

I updated my virus definitions manually. Later this evening, I received a second infected e-mail from a different source. It had the same type of format as the first. AVG still did not catch it.

Just a heads-up, DO NOT OPEN ANY ATTACHMENTS without thoroughly checking to make sure they are legitimate and were purposefully sent by the return addressee.

The good news is, I am not infected by this virus. The bad news is, AVG would not have known had I double-clicked the attachment. This kind of thing can happen NOMATTER what antivirus program you use; it just so happened it is one AVG did not have on its definitions list yet.

This message was edited Mar 3, 2004 10:53 PM