E-mail virus exploits September 11

According to security firm Sophos, the virus arrives in the form of an e-mail attachment called 11September.exe.

Accompanying text claims that the FBI and terrorist group Al-Qaeda worked together to plan last year's attacks in New York.

The e-mail attempts to coax users to click on the infected attachment with promises of photographs of Osama bin Laden and the US Secretary of State involved in 'friendly dialogue'.

Sick trick

"This is probably the sickest and lamest trick to date," said Graham Cluley, Senior Technology Consultant at Sophos.

"The author is the latest to use psychological tricks to try to dupe users into opening malicious code."

So far the worm has done little damage but Sophos urged users to be on the look-out.

"The implausibility of the allegations contained in the worm's e-mail will hopefully mean most people will instantly recognise this as suspicious," said Mr Cluley.

There has been a rash of viruses exploiting human weakness since the ILOVEYOU bug played up to users' romantic side.

E-mail worms inviting users to non-existent parties and viruses contained within pictures of stars have been common.

A recent survey found that many firms are still exposing themselves to viruses and according to the Department of Trade and Industry 17% of UK firms have no form of anti-virus protection.