Music-eating worm feeds on MP3s

A WIGGLY WORM that deletes any mp3 files it gets its, um, hands on has been detected.

The worm's not that smart or dangerous, unless you leave the virtual barn door open, in which case you could find your digital music collection decimated.

Sophos' most vocal worm-hunter, Graham Cluley reckons the authors of the worm, "are more likely to be teenage mischief makers than the organized criminal gangs we typically see authoring financially-motivated malware these days."

But he's only guessing. It could equally - in fact even more likely - be some twisted music company, pirate-hunting exec thinking he's doing his industry a good turn. Not that the worm knows whether the files it's deleting have been paid for or not.

Rival insecurity firm, Symantec named the worm W32.Deletemusic. It says it wriggles its way from USB stick to hard drives in a rather low-tech fashion. µ