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By Will Sturgeon, 12 May 2003 16:06

NEWS The Fizzer worm is starting to take off in Europe with a number of major anti-virus vendors upgrading it to their highest level of threat. By 17:00(BST) Messagelabs had intercepted almost 18,000 emails carrying the Fizzer worm on Monday alone - making it by far the most prolific virus currently in the wild. In comparison, Klez, which has topped the virus charts for the past 15 months, registered with just under 6,000 interceptions. Fizzer first appeared in the Far East on 7 May where it is still spreading rapidly. At the time of writing 43 per cent of all interceptions for Fizzer had been intercepted in China, according to MessageLabs. The US accounted for almost 18 per cent of all Fizzer activity - but European firms are being warned to be vigilant as the worm has already been intercepted across the continent. Fizzer spreads via a number of methods including peer-to-peer file-sharing service KaZaa and email. The back door Trojan has mass-mailing functionality and will send itself, once activated, to addresses contained in an infected machine's Outlook address book and Windows address book. It is received as an executable attachment and requires users to launch the virus through the attachment in order to infect their machine. Currently, F-Secure, MessageLabs and Trend Micro have Fizzer as a top-rated threat, while McAfee and Symantec are classing it as a 'medium' threat. silicon.com will keep you updated on the spread of Fizzer as more news breaks.