Virus threat: Goner on the rise

The Goner worm is challenging the Love Bug's infamy as the fastest-growing email threat of all time, according to anti-virus firm MessageLabs.

Reports claim the virus has already claimed a number of high-profile victims, including Dow Jones.

MessageLabs has picked up 53,000 infected emails since the worm broke yesterday morning. Currently one in 30 emails is infected with the malicious code, compared to one in 28 emails at the height of the Love Bug outbreak.

This compares with one email in every 75 for the next biggest virus - Homepage, and one email in 150 for the recent BadTrans virus.

Alex Shipp, anti-virus technologist for MessageLabs, said the virus will also be expensive to clean up because it disables PCs' anti-virus software.

This means IT departments hit by the virus may be forced to close down their email systems voluntarily to prevent being hit by other known viruses, which are suddenly rendered dangerous again.

Sal Viveros, director of marketing for McAfee, said the reason the worm has been so successful is because it hides in a.scr file, which many firms do not filter and many consumers do not expect to contain viruses.

He said: "This is hitting businesses and consumers alike. We have hundreds of thousands of customers whose email has been taken down by the sheer volume of emails."

The worm is a piece of mass-mailer malware which spreads itself by using MS Outlook.

Once the attachment is opened, it shows a dialog box with greetings and animation as well as a fake error message.

The worm then connects itself to the address book and mass-mails itself to all recipients.

It arrives with the subject heading 'Hi' and features the following body text:
"How are you ? When I saw this screen saver, I immediately thought about you. I am in a harry, I promise you will love it!"