Oh dear, oh dear. F-Secure's UK antivirus mailing list became the unwitting vector for the spread of Netsky-B worm this week after the AV vendor failed to stop an infected email from making it onto its security list.

F-Secure has apologised for the cock-up, which it blames on human error.

The Finnish-based firm's UK bulletin list was hit after the Netsky-B virus found its way from an infected machine somewhere in the US to the unmoderated list. The list goes out to F-Secure's customers and partners in Britain.

F-Secure pledged to take "immediate steps to change how messages can be sent to this list", in order to prevent any repetition of the security blunder.

The attack didn't affect the Finnish firm's internal systems. Even so the mistake is highly embarrassing - though far from unprecedented even among security firms.

In November 2002 Russian AV firm Kasperky Labs suffered similar discomfort when its mailing list was hijacked. As a result, thousands of subscribers to the list received copies of the Braid worm. ®

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