Internet worms spread from Latin America

Internet worms, which at first were thought to be dormant, are spreading around the world after incubating in areas such as Latin America, where antivirus protection is less stringent.

Antivirus vendors are warning companies to make sure their software is up to date after the discovery over the weekend of the internet worm Hybris, which like the internet worm Navidad has been upgraded in risk after previously doing little harm.

Alex Shipp, antivirus technologist at MessageLabs, an application service provider that scans email to protect customers from viruses, said so far his company has intercepted 154 copies of Navidad and four of Hybris, both of which have mainly been received from South America.

"Viruses like this are bubbling around in countries like Brazil, where protection is less good, until they reach a large enough population to reach critical mass. Once people with contacts overseas are infected, the viruses then spread," said Shipp.

The issue is important because even though protection has been available for sometime, Navidad struck 10 of the Fortune 500 companies in the US last week and has spread to the UK.

Kaspersky Labs said it has discovered five versions of the Hybris worm, which is particularly active in South America, and that it had been "inundated with reports from users" of what it describes as a highly sophisticated virus.

Hybris, which works only on Windows systems, spreads by attaching itself to infected emails. When a recipient executes the attached file, their PC becomes infected.

To spread, the worm infects WSOCK32.DLL library and the Windows function that establishes a network connection. It scans for email addresses, and sends copies of itself to those addresses.

But Graham Cluley, senior technology consultant at UK-based antivirus company Sophos, described Hybris as "small scale". He said users who practise "safe computing", which involves updating antivirus software and not opening suspicious attachments, would already be protected.

"Our phones are not buzzing with this one," said Cluley.