Virus writers stage online slanging match

The authors of the MyDoom, Bagel and Netsky worms are staging a public slanging match - with the world's PCs as their arena.

The war started when an early version of Netsky, referred to as either C or D, began removing the Bagel and MyDoom viruses as part of its payload.

And now the authors of MyDoom.G, spreading today, have included comments in the worm's code insulting Netsky.

A similar message was found in Bagel J, also discovered today, which ended: "Don't ruine our bussiness, wanna start a war?"

Netsky's authors responded with the following message in Netsky.F: "Skynet AntiVirus - Bagle - you are a looser!!!"

"We have three different groups fighting here," said Mikko Hypponen, director of antivirus research for F-Secure.

"Netsky seems to come from an individual or hobbyist group while Bagel's creators appear to be a spam group like MyDoom's authors. We don't know who's going to win but in the meantime the rest of us are all losing."

The battle continues to hot up, with more than one new variant of all three viruses being identified today.