Little Davinia causes virus havoc says Panda

Five large European companies may have been infected by a new email worm called Little Davinia, according to Spanish security vendor Panda Software.

Panda claims the infected companies have lost a large amount of data in the attack, which links users to a web page that silently downloads the destructive VBS file. Once an infected machine is rebooted the VBS script overwrites data on the hard disk and network drive. However, rival vendors Symantec and Sophos have not seen the worm in the wild and have had no reports of infections from their customers. Eric Chien, chief researcher at Symantec's anti-virus centre, said: "Its unlikely that anyone else will be infected. The website containing the script has now been shutdown." Panda first saw the worm on Friday, but has angered other anti-virus vendors by refusing to release copies of the malware until Monday morning. Graham Cluley, senior technology consultant at Sophos, said: "The good news is we have now received a sample. We heard it was going to be worse than the love bug, but I don't think there's a love bug incident going on out there." Panda has refused to reveal the identities of the infected companies or the portal which contained the malicious code.