A new Internet worm has emerged in China akin to the "Code Red" worm, which caused $2.4 billion in estimated cleanup costs on Internet-linked computers last month, a computer security expert said on Friday.
The "Code Blue" worm has similarities with the Code Red worm, which caused widespread problems, said a worker at the police-run Computer Virus Treatment Center in Tianjin, near Beijing.
"We"ve already gotten hold of the virus and we"re analyzing it," said the worker, who declined to be named.
The worker at the center in Tianjin said the Code Blue worm infects computers exploits a different weakness in the software from the Code Red viruses.
The Code Blue worm, which is the work of a mischievous computer expert, slows infected computers, which eventually crash, the official Xinhua news agency said.