A fresh email virus - of the same type as the 'Anna Kournikova' and 'love bug' outbreaks - has been sweeping through companies from Australia to Europe.

The 'homepage' virus redirects a user's browser to a pornographic website, but does not delete files or otherwise alter the computer. The damage occurs when the virus emails itself to everyone in a user's address book, clogging up a company's web server and shutting it down.

Computer security firm Sophos said that about 40 companies in the UK have been hit so far. The Australian government has also confirmed an attack. Last year the 'I Love You' virus infected an estimated 45m computers across Asia, Europe and North America.

The subject header is 'homepage' and the text of the email reads, "Hi, you've got to see this page!" If a user then double clicks on the attachment - marked homepage.html.vbs - the virus will begin sending out infected emails.

According to Graham Cluley, a senior technical consulatant at Sophos, the virus appears to have been written with the same downloadable 'virus kit' that spawned the Anna Kournikova outbreak on Valentine's day.

He added that companies should simply block Visual Basic, or vbs, email attachments and that users should think twice before opening an attachment with a vbs extension.

"It is just over a year since the love bug virus, and if users had learned lessons from that we would not have this situation. People need to start blocking vbs files and practising safe computing," Mr Cluley said.

Related articles

08.03.2001: Don't believe the virus hype

15.02.2001: Hacker launched Anna bug 'as a warning'

14.02.2001: 'Anna' email virus wreaks havoc