Worm Warning: Britney pics carry a nasty surprise

A virus named after teen pop sensation Britney Spears has been discovered by anti-virus experts.

The worm, called VBS/Britney-A spreads via both Microsoft Outlook and Internet Relay Chat (IRC) networks and it emails itself to all addresses in the Outlook address list.

The virus arrives with a subject line "RE: Britney Pics" and has the following body text: "Take a look at these pics..." The worm requires ActiveX to be enabled for the VBS script to run so it tries to get the user to enable it with a message: "Enable ActiveX To See Britny Pictures".

Virus experts say despite the appealing nature of its purported contents, it's unlikely to cause any serious damage to corporate networks.

Sophos anti-virus said: "The worm looks at different directories on C:, D:, and E: for a file called MIRC.INI. If it is found, the worm drops a file called SCRIPT.INI which will help it spread via IRC. It also drops a copy of itself in the Windows directory as the file BRITNEY.CHM."

Graham Cluley, technical specialist at Sophos said Britney is not a serious outbreak: "We haven't seen it in the wild yet, but obviously a virus named Britney will attract a degree of attention so we are going to alert our customers."