New virus deletes MP3s

Security companies say the worm is only low risk, although its unusual payload could give a nasty surprise to an ardent music fan. The motivation of the hackers who created it are unclear.

"The authors of this worm are more likely to be teenage mischief makers than the organized criminal gangs we typically see authoring financially-motivated malware these days," said Graham Cluley, senior technology consultant for the security vendor Sophos PLC.

"As such, it's not something we would lose an awful lot of sleep over, but there are some lessons that computer users should learn to minimize the chances of infection," he said.

The worm spreads via removable flash drives, reminiscent of the way viruses spread via floppy disks decades ago. That may be an attempt by the authors of the worm to bypass e-mail filters and Web gateway filters that block malicious software, Cluley said.