Companies worldwide have been hit hard by the "I LOVE YOU" E-mail virus. The extremely fast-spreading worm uses mIRC and Microsoft Outlook to E-mail itself as an attachment, researchers at Symantec Research Center say.

According to wire service reports, Ford Motor Co. was forced to shut down its e-mail system. Other companies reporting being infected include Time Warner Inc., Vodafone AirTouch Plc., and Archer Daniels Midland Co.

U.S. military commands, the Central Intelligence Agency, Civil Air Patrol, General Accounting Office, and the FBI-led National Infrastructure Protection Center have been stung as well, according to wire reports.

According to Forrester security analyst Frank Prince, VBS.LoveLetter.A is an Internet worm that spreads as an attachment with the subject line "I LOVE YOU," and carries an attachment called "LOVE-LETTER-FOR-YOU.txt.vbs."

According to Symantec, preliminary findings indicate that the worm sends itself to all addresses in the computer user's Outlook address book, causing mail servers to clog. The worm will corrupt files with the following extensions: vbs, vbe, je, jse, css, wsh, sct, hta, jpg, jpeg, mp3, and mp2.

It will also delete the following files:

- MSKernel32.vbs in the Windows system directory- Win32DLL.vbs in the Windows directory - LOVE-LETTER-FOR-YOU.txt.vbs in the Windows system directory - WinFAT32.exe in the Internet download directory - Win-bugfix.exe in the Internet download directory - Script.ini in the mIRC directory

Prince says that aside from trashing files, the worm apparently attempts to send password and username information from a user's hard drive to an unspecified E-mail address.

"It appears antivirus companies learned about this close to midnight last night," says Prince, who added that early this morning, Symantec, F-secure, and Sophos have all published software that will detect the virus. "But the (antivirus Web sites have stopped responding. They're probably getting bombarded with requests," Prince says. Computer Associates is offering its antivirus InoculateIT program at its Web site to combat the bug.

"This is a particularly insidious virus from a social standpoint," says Prince. "Imagine someone who has just had a disagreement with their wife. Gets to work and finds a 'love letter,' and when they click on it, it crashes their computer and destroys their digital family pictures."

"This virus has hit big around the world," he says. Preliminary research hints that the virus may have got its start in the Philippines or Asia. Text strings within the worm read "spyder," "Manila," and "I hate to go to school."