The latest viral threat to your inbox is a worm which takes advantage of the current tension between the US and Islamic countries.
"Peace between America and Islam" reads the subject line for the Vote worm, which uses the victim's Microsoft Outlook email address book to propagate itself. It then attempts to delete files from various anti-virus programs as well as format the user's hard drive and overwrite HTML files to include the text: "America [sic] a few days we will show you what we can do. It's our turn. Zacker is sorry for you."
Anti-virus firm Symantec said late yesterday that there had been no reports of infection in New Zealand yet.
"We've had contact from a couple of clients about what it's all about but nothing to say anyone's been hit yet," says country manager Richard Batchelar.
The body of the email reads "Hi. Is it a war against America or Islam? Let's vote to live in peace." Included in the email is an attached document called WTC.exe. When the attachment is double-clicked, the computer is infected. The virus is similar to the "I love you" virus because its first goal is to send itself on using Outlook Express.
US-based anti-virus company Trend Micro reports the Vote worm acting slightly differently, however, including modifying the autoexec.bat file in DOS.
So far it appears sightings of the Vote worm are restricted to north America, but because of the nature of the text it is expected to spread to other centres quickly.