Frethem worm heads for Europe

Antivirus firms have released an updated warning concerning a month-old worm on the rise in Asia and expected to be seen on the increase in Europe.

As reported on vnunet.com, infections of the worm in Africa and Asia occurred this time last month.

The Frethem worm, which reportedly started in Africa, has been spotted in the wild in Europe and has seen a significant rise in infection rates in Japan over the past 24 hours.

It has also been confirmed that a number of variants are on the loose.

Arriving as an executable attachment in an email, the worm purports to be a password and uses social engineering to trick users into opening the file. It then forwards itself by hijacking email addresses found on the victim's computer.

Despite the fact that the worm was discovered a month ago and most antivirus firms have already released antigens, Trend Micro, Network Associates and Panda Software have all deemed the increasing number of infections worthy of further warnings to users.

A web-facing server at Japan's National Aerospace Laboratory was reportedly infected with the virus yesterday, forcing the closure of electronic communications for several hours.

Panda said that it has "registered numerous cases of infection" involving the Frethem.k variant of the worm, and warned that "although it is still too early to talk about an epidemic, the number of incidents is expected to rise in the next few hours".