“Antivirus companies scrambled to protect their customers against a new computer virus, dubbed ‘Goner,’ which surfaced Tuesday, deleting system files and clogging networks across the globe,” says a report In today’s Wall Street Journal.

“The virus spreads via e-mail and is activated when the victim clicks on an attachment masquerading as a screen saver.”

“E-mail with the Goner virus has a subject line that reads, ‘Hi’ and text that reads: ‘How are you? When I saw this screen saver, I immediately thought about you I am in a harry, I promise you will love it!’ “

“Once activated, Goner deletes antivirus security software and installs some software that experts say could later be used by hackers to launch further attacks.”

“Security company McAfee.com Corp. reported that thousands of its clients sent in copies of the worm. An Internet worm has the ability to spread to other computers on its own.”

“Like many e-mail attacks, the virus sends itself out to everyone in the victim’s address book. It also can send itself through AOL Time Warner Inc.’s instant-messaging program ICQ and Internet relay chat, or IRC.”

“In addition to ICQ, Goner affects Microsoft Corp.’s Outlook and Outlook Express e-mail programs on computers running Windows.”

” ‘This [virus] is laying scripts onto these computers that can be used for a denial of service attack,’ said Kevin Haley, group product manager at antivirus software maker Symantec Corp.’s security response team in Santa Monica, Calif.

Mr. Haley said Goner is a ‘blended threat,’ meaning it combines a virus attack with the groundwork for a hacker attack. ‘Blended threats are on the rise,’ he said.”