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By clicking sign up, you agree to receive emails from Techopedia and agree to our Terms of Use and Privacy Policy. Bugbear is a virus that has been responsible for thousands of cases of virus hacking that involve exploiting Microsoft Outlook and Outlook Express to install a keylogger on personal and business computers.

This is one of several similar viruses that enters the computer through an attachment to an email. In Bugbear, the virus code is automatically installed when the email is viewed, even on the MS Outlook preview page.

Bugbear shows up with email subject lines that may seem legitimate to a user, although many have learned to recognize these types of spam, and delete these messages instead of opening them. Many security experts consider Bugbear a "classic virus" in that it was a major threat around ten or twelve years ago, but has now been largely replaced by more sophisticated methods that can get by modern spam filters.

In terms of its actual operations, Bugbear is more of a security threat than the type of virus that simply crashes systems and deletes files—there are components of this virus are of great concern to security experts. First, Bugbear auto-generates lists of additional recipients when it is installed. One other important security aspect of Bugbear is that it can actually target anti-virus and firewall programs, attempting to stall or close down their operations, leading some to dub this an "anti-anti-virus.

By: Brad Rudisail Contributor. By: Kaushik Pal Contributor. By: Leah Zitter Contributor. Dictionary Dictionary Term of the Day. Decentralized Finance. Techopedia Terms. Connect with us. Sign up. Part of Bugbear's success is due to its using its own e-mail engine to send off infected messages.

As a result, the infected messages it sends contain a random e-mail address in the header's "from" field. This can camouflage, to some degree, the e-mail's source, which makes it difficult to determine whose computer sent the infected message.

Identifying the infected computer, therefore, is that much more difficult. The tactic has been so effective that Bugbear created more than , e-mail messages seen by MessageLabs' gateway in the last 24 hours, far outpacing the almost 60, messages created by Klez.

Be respectful, keep it civil and stay on topic. We delete comments that violate our policy , which we encourage you to read. Discussion threads can be closed at any time at our discretion. Bugbear virus shows its claws The infectious program continues to spread, spurring several antivirus software makers to bump up their rating of the danger the code poses.

Robert Lemos. The Bugbear virus continued to spread, spurring several antivirus software makers to raise their estimates of the program's danger for the second time this week.