SirCam worm still causing chaos

1,000 UK companies have been hit by the SirCam virus, leading anti-virus companies to increase their warnings.

Symantec have upgraded the threat level of the worm, from a level 3 category to level 4 (severe) late yesterday, due to a 200 per cent increase in the number of companies affected.

The SirCam bug - which works in a in a similar way to the destructive Magistr worm - is especially dangerous as it sends out personal information from infected users 'My documents' files and is difficult to detect because it changes the subject line.

The bug will also delete every file on users hard drives if it is not eradicated by 16 October.

Sal Viveros, marketing director at McAfee, said: "A patch has been out for at least a week now, but still countless people and companies are complacent about using it."

Viveros added that that at least 1,000 British companies had fallen foul of the SirCam bug so far.

Both Sophos and Kaspersky Labs have dubbed SirCam one of the fastest spreading malicious programs of the year.