Fast Spreading Homepage Worm Directs Readers to View Porn

A new worm, nicknamed Homepage, is spreading fast across the Internet. The Homepage worm spreads by sending a copy of itself to all addresses in the recipients’ Outlook address book. The message subject reads "Homepage," while the message body contains the sentence "You've got to see this page! It's really cool ;O)". An attachment to the message (homepage.html.vbs) contains a Visual Basic (VB) script that opens one of four randomly selected pornographic Web sites.

Antivirus software maker Panda Software said that the Homepage worm is one of several versions of a virus called VBSWG.150.Crypted that has appeared around the Internet over the last few weeks.

The worm surfaced in Europe earlier this week and has been generating huge mail server loads due to the way in which it propagates itself to all users in an address book. This propagation method is the same as the method that other fast-spreading worms, such as the Kournikova, have used.

Antivirus software vendors say the Homepage worm is spreading just as fast, if not faster, than Kournikova spread. "Early propagation reports indicate that this virus is spreading faster than many of the biggest viruses we saw last year," said Mikko Hypponen, manager of antivirus research for F-Secure Corporation. "It seems to be spreading faster [than] Anna Kournikova.