Panda Software reported the discovery of a new worm in Europe. According to a press release issued by Panda Software, five companies have already suffered heavy data loss after becoming infected with the LittleDivinia worm.
The worm (littledavinia.vbs) is written in Visual Basic Script (VBS) and only affects systems with Word 2000 installed. LittleDavinia spreads by infecting systems through the Web browser while visiting a site designed to spread the worm. Once active on a system, the worm then overwrites all accessible files on both local and network drives with HTML code. The code displays a message that reads, "As a consequence of this, all information on the hard disk will be irretrievably lost." LittleDavinia then attempts to spread itself by sending an email message to all persons listed in the user's address book. The message contains HTML code that directs the email recipient to a Web site designed to further spread the worm.
