Virus e-mails soar by a factor of 20

Experts warn of 'explosive growth' in cyber-fraud, theft, spam and viruses. Hackers and spammers have "raised their onslaught" with two global e-mail-borne virus attacks launched in December and January. The attacks were so large that they drove up the level of viruses up by a factor of 20 compared with usual activity, according to data from security firm Postini.

The January attack became known as the Storm worm because the original e-mail subject line was '230 dead as storm batters Europe'. At the time of the e-mail, there was a heavy storm occurring in Europe.

The e-mail that contained the virus frequently mutated to show dozens of different sensational but believable headlines designed to tempt the reader into clicking on an attachment and infecting their computer.

Other subjects included 'Russian missile shot down USA aircraft' and 'Saddam Hussein alive!'

The infectious e-mail had a file attachment containing a Trojan known as 'Downloader-BAI' or 'AUTH-W32/Downloader'. If a user clicked on the attachment, their computer was infected with the virus which then attempted to send personal information back to the hackers who created the virus.