Security vendor embarrassed by virus blunder

Internet security company F-Secure have been left red faced after a clerical error at the Finnish company's London office led to thousands of its customers in Britain being sent an email from the company which contained a virus.

Mikko Hyppoenen, who is in charge of anti-virus research at F-Secure, admitted that the incident was a "major blunder, and obviously something that should never happen, especially from an anti-virus company like ours."

Hyppoenen revealed that the embarrassing episode was caused by an employee who inadvertently approved the sending of the infected email generated by the Netsky.B Internet worm, which had managed to obtain a copy of the company's British mailing list after infecting a computer from outside the company that received emails from F-secure.

The one saving grace for F-Secure in the whole debacle was the fact that the virus was old by the time its customers received it, so most of the recipients had already updated their anti-virus software to combat the virus and were therefore protected against it causing any harm.

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