Several antivirus companies remained on high alert Friday after the continued spread of a new computer worm that includes particularly malicious snooping techniques. Bugbear.B, a variant of a worm released last year, installs keylogging software, back-door software, and in some cases even attempts to control infected computers’ modems. Some of the worm’s functions are designed to specially target financial institutions. THE NEW WORM spread to 164 countries in the first 24 hours after its release Thursday morning, according to antivirus firm MessageLabs. There was hope that the worm’s spread would slow at the end of the workday Thursday, but it continued to hit computer users worldwide on Friday. Symantec Corp. raised its risk rating to 4 on a scale of 1 to 5, joining a host of other firms which described the program as a high risk to both home and corporate Internet users. Vincent Weafer, senior director of security response at Symantec, said the firm had received 3,000 submissions from customers who received BugBear. That means the worm is growing faster than Klez, last year’s most virulent computer worm — and it might turn out to be the biggest e-mail virus outbreak in the past two years. “This thing is still growing,” Weafer said. Full Story