Computer viruses are proliferating faster than ever, according to British security company MessageLabs, which reported Tuesday that it caught as many pests in the first half of 2002 as it did in all of last year.
The company, which screens corporate e-mail accounts for viruses, said it intercepted more than 2 million infected messages in the first six months of 2002, double what it encountered in the same period last year.
Various forms of the Klez worm were the worst offenders, responsible for more than half of all infected messages. Klez, which started off as a fairly innocuous mass-mailing worm, mutated into nastier versions as virus writers tried to improve on the original code, resulting in the pandemic Klez.h variant.
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