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A new variant of the destructive Klez worm has had moderate success, prompting one antivirus company this past weekend to release free tools to deal with its spread.
The variant, carried by e-mail and known as Klez.e overwrites victims' files with random content on the sixth day of odd-numbered months. It can spread automatically on Windows systems that use an unpatched version of Microsoft's Internet Explorer.
"The latest version, Klez.e, (poses) the most serious threat to computer safety," said Moscow-based antivirus company Kaspersky Labs.
Though antivirus companies discovered the Klez.e variant in late January, its tenacity has prompted Kaspersky Labs to release an antivirus tool to remove it.
Based on how many instances of each worm and virus the company has intercepted in the past 24 hours, U.K.-headquartered mail service provider MessageLabs ranks Klez.e fourth on its top 10 list, behind Sircam, BadTrans and Magistr--old worms that continue to plague the Internet. However, the company has intercepted fewer than 400 copies of Klez.e.
News source: CNET
