A worm written in apparent tribute to Canadian singer/skater chick Avril Lavigne is spreading across the Net today.

Avril-A (Lirva) is pretty much your bog standard Windows worm. It spreads mainly as an infectious attachment within emails and takes advantage of a year-old exploit in Outlook that permits its execution without a user double clicking on an infected attachment. The worm also tries to disable AV and security software.

Oh and this is a Windows only virus - Mac and Linux users are, as usual, immune.

On infected machines, Avril-A opens IE on the Canadian singer's Web site, www.avril-lavigne.com, on the 7th, 11th and 24th of the month.

The worm comes with various subject lines, such as 'Fw: Avril Lavigne - the best', as explained in more depth here.

Managed services firm MessageLabs reports capturing 11,165 copies of the virus so far, since first detecting it on Monday (January 6).

AV vendors have updated their signature files to detect the worm. There's really no good reason to get caught out: simply filtering executable attachments from emails will guard against this virus. ®

Celebrity Virus Chart

1. Anna Kournikova
   
2. Jennifer Lopez
   
3. Avril Lavigne (new entry)
   
4. Britney Spears
   
5. Keith Chegwin