‘Worm’ Virus Spreading Through Office Network Links

Proving even more hostile than first believed, the computer virus Worm.Explore.Zip sprang back from a deceptively quiet weekend amid warnings that it uses more than e-mail trickery to spread.

Computer support lines were inundated Monday with calls about new outbreaks of the file-killing virus, which experts now say was also designed to spread within an organization through computer network links that enable co-workers to share files on one another’s machines.

When the epidemic first picked up steam last week, infecting tens of thousands of computers at major corporations, the primary mode of transmission had seemed to be a friendly e-mail that tricks the recipient into opening a contaminated file.

By eliminating the need for a helping human hand, Worm.Explore.Zip could prove more difficult to eradicate than the Melissa and Chernobyl viruses, which struck earlier this spring by e-mail only.

The additional mode of contamination may also render some of the cures posted on the Internet by software companies last week less effective.