MSN Messenger, Microsoft's instant message service, is back up and running this morning after a routine maintenance operation went wrong, rendering the service sporadically unavailable for three days.

A glitch, which created problems logging onto the service from Saturday afternoon until Monday evening, appeared following routine maintenance. A Microsoft spokesperson told El Reg that the glitch was nothing to do with a worm capable of spreading via MSN Messenger yesterday. Reports from anti-virus firms on the worm, dubbed Funner, support this conclusion.

Funner spreads from infected PC by sending itself to a user's instant message contacts. The worm also attempts to contact www.78p.com domain to download viral updates onto infected PCs. Funner has generated few reports, according to anti-virus firms; so recent glitches with MSN Messenger are not explained by the worm's arrival on the net. ®

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