Twenty thousand Irish customers of IT giant Microsoft have been contacted by the company as it tries to stem the spread of the blaster virus, designed to bombard its Windows Update website from tomorrow.
Revealing that some Irish customers had been infected with the 'worm' virus, Microsoft said it had released an anti-blaster patch which can be downloaded from the Web. Users are also advised to upgrade security systems by installing firewalls.
Concerned at the spread of the virus, thought to have reached 200,000 computers globally, Microsoft will take out ads in the national papers tomorrow and is keeping its emergency hotline open during the weekend.
The virus has programmed infected computers to bombard the Windows Update website with corrupt data from tomorrow with the intention of causing it to crash.
The worm, also called MSBlaster or LoveSan, infected office and home computers in the United States on Monday and quickly spread worldwide, taking advantage of a security hole discovered last month in Microsoft's Windows 2000, Windows XP, Windows NT and Windows Server 2003 operating systems.
The Microsoft patch can be downloaded at: www.microsoft.com/security/incident/blast.asp
