New York, Aug 21: A virus that debuted this week has been declared the fastest spreading e-mail plague of all time, while another malicious programme that hit last week continued to disrupt computers worldwide. Messagelabs Inc., a company that filters e-mail for corporate clients around the world, Wednesday said it had intercepted more than a million copies of the "Sobig.F" virus the previous day, the most it has ever intercepted in a single day. That was one in every 17 e-mail messages the firm scanned.
"That's just a number we've never seen before," said Brian Czarny, Messagelabs' marketing director. The most widespread virus of all time, "Klez", at its peak accounted for one in 125 messages scanned.
Sobig.F continued to spread aggressively on yesterday, though the pace eased off a bit to about one in 60 messages, he said.
The virus, which is the sixth and latest strain of a virus that first emerged in January, spreads through windows PCs via e-mail and corporate networks. Besides clogging e-mail systems with messages carrying subject lines like "Re: details" and "Re: wicked screensaver", the virus also deposits a Trojan Horse, or Hacker Back Door, that can be used to turn victims' PCs into relayers of spam e-mail.
"It's a seeding," Czarny said. "All they're looking to do is plant that Trojan."

Bureau Report