New virus 'the work of a bored Romanian student'

The Sticy.A virus is an IRC backdoor spread by email with a spoofed address (support@bitdefender.com). The email prompts users to download harmful executables from a Romanian website.

"We expect this to be the work of a bored Romanian student or some such. The whole setup is amateurish in the extreme," said Bogdan Dumitru, CTO of BitDefender. "Nevertheless, we have been receiving about 20 bounced emails per minute, so I suspect the virus is spreading at a steady pace."

Bitdefender has warned users not to follow the link or download the executables in question. It has said in a statement it does "NOT under any circumstances, send security warnings of any kind". the firm has also contacted the hosting company of the website and asked to remove the site.

The company has urged users to update their anti-virus software.

www.bitdefender.com