Hong Kong computer network administrators scrambled over the weekend to stop the spread of the new mass-mailing Klez worm variant that continued to bog down systems.
Anti-virus experts expected cases of infection to continue this week as systems administrators try to deal with the worm's extra payload, a revamped version of the ElKern virus.
Despite assurances by anti-virus software companies that their programs could handle the variant, infections remained tough to cure for several organisations.
An official of ACT Teleconferencing in Hong Kong complained about the inability of software to purge the Klez variant from the company's network, which was infected on Friday. Bob Deverell of ACT Teleconferencing said that up until Saturday there had been no software to destroy the virus.
'Irrespective of what Symantec or other vendors say, there has been no way to stop this worm in the short term. We have been struggling to clean our machines. We haven't been able to stop it and we're very competent,' he said.
Symantec has classified both the new variants of the Klez worm and the ElKern virus as medium risk.
Charles Cousins, managing director of British anti-virus specialist Sophos, said some organisations had had more trouble with the new Klez worm variant because of the additional malicious program it carried.
