UK businesses were targeted in a blitz of 215,000 emails containing a new Trojan on Monday (19 December), according to email filtering firm BlackSpider Technologies. The malware - called Small-BXP - comes in the payload to a message that poses as a receipt for access to an online porn site.

Infected emails have the subject line "Payment receipt". The attachment is a packed executable FSG file called FILE.965658 which is 5492 bytes long. Analysis of the malware is ongoing, with Kaspersky and Symantec among the first vendors to issue anti-virus updates. Firms are urged to set up rules to block the malware the gateway whilst consumers are urged to be cautious about unsolicited emails. As usual, Small-BXP is a Windows-only threat.

It's not uncommon for virus writers to use networks of compromised PCs to disseminate their wares over a short space of time but the ferocity of the latest attack is unusual. The sexually-related theme of the infected messages is all too familiar. ®

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