03 May 2004	Monday	12 Rabi-ul-Awwal 1425

PARIS, May 2: A new Internet computer worm caused disruptions over the weekend but experts warned it may spread rapidly when businesses resume work on Monday morning.

The worm, named Sasser, began to spread on Saturday, and unlike a virus does not travel through e-mails or attachments. It can spread by itself to any unprotected computer linked to the Internet.

It attacks through a flaw in recent versions of Microsoft's Windows - Windows 2000, Windows Server 2003 and Windows XP - and causes the computer to shut down, then rebooting it, repeating the process several times. But it appears to do no lasting damage.

"The problem seems to be getting worse," Mikko Hyppoenen, an anti-virus expert at F-Secure, a leading internet security firm, told AFP on Sunday from Helsinki, adding that millions of computers world-wide may have been infected.

"We don't know how big this is going to be (but) we expect things to get much worse on Monday when people bring their laptops in to the office after the weekend," Hyppoenen said. -AFP