Reuters Squashes Worm, Restores IM

[Jeff]

Reuters resumed its instant-messaging service on Friday after having suspended it for a day to stop the spread of a variant of the Kelvir worm.

As of 7 a.m. London time, Reuters PLC made its Reuters Messaging service available again to customers of the enterprise IM service.

Reuters PLC had suspended the messaging service early Thursday after a "handful" of Reuters Messaging customers began reporting infections from the worm, a variant of the Kelvir worm that has largely plagued MSN Messenger.

The worm, named Kelvir-Re by some security researchers, attempts to get users to download malicious code by way of a link included in a message. The worm replicates by sending the malicious message to contacts in an infected user‘s contact list.

In a statement, Reuters said that the majority of its users stayed clear of the worm, though it did not provide an exact count of the number infected. Unlike popular consumer IM services such as AOL Instant Messenger, MSN Messenger and Messenger, Reuters Messaging is a more controlled IM network largely used among financial services companies. It has about 60,000 users, including 16,000 at Reuters.

"The majority of Reuters customers run proper compliance, firewall and anti-virus protection and were therefore not infected," Reuters said in the statement.

Also, users of the most recent version of Reuters Messaging, Version 4.0, are immune to the worm, according to the London-based company. Version 4.0 is a free upgrade that has been available since October.