Companies alerted by the Love Bug epidemic two weeks ago seem to have contained the spread of a new, more dangerous virus, experts said last Friday. The virus, christened NewLove, infected thousands of computers around the world over the past two days., but failed to achieve the avalanche-like spread of Love Bug because network administrators for many companies were able to block infected e-mails.

The damage to those affected was much greater, however, since NewLove erases almost all files on a computer it infects and causes it to crash. Two weeks ago, we all got some love mail. Today were getting hate mail. This is a very nasty one, said Simon Perry at software company Computer Associates International Inc.

Gene Hodges at software company Network Associates Inc, said a company in Israel was the first to report the virus early last Thursday. It shut down its connection to the Internet to curtail thespread, but the virus later surfaced in Europe and the United States.

US companies were quick to add protective measures, Hodges said, a marked difference from their reaction to the spread of the Love Bug. Had awareness not been heightened by the Love Bug, the new virus could have spread fast and caused untold damages, Hodges said. In this perspective , Love Bug was a very positive wake-up call.

The Love Bug arrived in e-mails with an I LOVE YOU subject line that enticed millions of recepients to open the attachment that activated the virus. Once news spread of the virus, infected e-mails were easily detected and deleted. Estimates of the damage caused range up to US$10 billion (RM38 billion), mostly in lost work time; the NewLove virus is expected to total much less, despite being more deviously designed.

The subject line of an e-mail infected starts with FW: and includes the name of a file from the senders computer. The e-mail will have an attachment with the same name, but it may have a .vbs extension visible. Clicking on it will activate the virus. Like Love Bug, it will send itself to everybody in the users address book. It will then overwrite most files on the hard drive, rendering the computer useless until the operating system is reinstalled.

This worm is too destructive to go very far, said Miko Hypponen at anti-virus company F-secure Corp. With NewLove, your computer crashes immediately. Its difficult to miss that.