Virus Warning: Fizzer bubbling under

Computer users are being warned of a new virus which has been spreading rapidly in the wild in the Far East and has now reached Europe.

Fizzer is a self-propagating worm which can propogates itself via email and peer-to-peer file sharing service KaZaA.

Security firm F-Secure has given Fizzer a Level One status - its highest alert - while other vendors, such as Trend and McAfee, are adopting a watching brief, classifying it currently as a 'yellow alert' and 'medium on watch' repsectively.

The virus arrives in an email with of a number of potential subject lines, including:

"So how are you?" "Check it out" "There is only one good, knowledge, and on evil, ignorance" "you must not show this to anyone" "Today is a good day to die" "thought I'd let you know" "Filth is a death" "Watchin' the game, having a bud." "Did you ever stop to think that viruses are good for the economy? ..."

When activated the worm sends itself to email addresses stored in the infected PC's Windows and Outlook address books and drops several files into the Windows folder called: initbak.dat, iservc.dll, iservc.exe and ProgOp.exe.

As ever the advice is to be cautious when opening any files which has arrived over email - especially when you cannot vouch for the source or the content.