Washington - A new computer virus named Nimda is spreading over the internet and could be worse than the Code Red worm, the US Attorney General, Mr John Ashcroft, said yesterday.
He added there was no evidence the new computer worm was linked to last week's attacks on the World Trade Centre and the Pentagon. Mr Ashcroft said the new internet infection, which spells admin backwards, may have started as early as Monday and that it affected computers worldwide by overloading traffic on the internet.
He said the latest computer worm could be "heavier" than the Code Red worm that caused an estimated $2.4 billion in clean-up costs on internet-linked computers last month. With Nimda, affected computers scan the internet in search of other computers and this substantially increases traffic on the internet, said Mr Ashcroft.