Destructive new Love Bug variant in the wild

Several companies in Europe and Israel have reportedly been hit by a new, far more destructive variant of the infamous Love Bug worm.

Officials at security software maker Symantec said in addition to mailing itself to everyone on the Microsoft Outlook address book, the new virus also deletes all files on the victim's computer - along with any mapped, network drives - by setting the files' lengths to zero.

The malicious code appears as an apparent attachment from a friend, with the subject line "FW:" followed by a random file name.

For their protection, Outlook users are advised to download Microsoft's newest patch and immediately turn off VBS scripts.

More details are available at www.zdnn.com.