yesterday hit Bermuda.

The e-mail, which appears with the subject line "FW: Naked Wife'', deletes almost all of a computer's vital system files. It also sends itself out to everyone in the user's e-mail address book.

Yesterday programmers at Lines Overseas Management in Bermuda stopped the virus when it infiltrated computers at the Hamilton company.

Like the most recent widespread virus that used the name of Russian tennis star Anna Kournikova, "Naked Wife'' takes advantage of users' "baser instincts'', an anti-virus company spokeswoman said.

Steve Trilling, director of research at the Symantec Antivirus Research Center, said about 20 of Symantec's clients in Canada, the United States and Europe had been hit. "It essentially destroys your Windows operating system,'' he said.

Trilling said the virus may have come from Brazil. Information inside the virus source code mentions AGF Brasil, an insurance company, and the name "MHSantos''.

"One could fake this stuff, but indications in a virus for the most part tend to be correct,'' Trilling said, adding that names found in the recent "Love Letter'' virus eventually led to that programme's creator.

The virus e-mail contains an attachment called "NakedWife.exe''. Like most viruses, the recipient's computer is only infected if the receiver runs the attachment, and major anti-virus companies have released software that detects and removes it.

Susan Orbach, spokeswoman for Trend Micro, said her company has received reports of infections from ten corporate clients, including two large telecommunications firms, a federal agency and a "multinational conglomerate'', she said.

New virus hits the Island "This is not any new technology we haven't seen before,'' Orbach said. "It's social engineering to take advantage of our baser instincts.'' Both Trilling and Orbach suggested that corporate network administrators block incoming programme attachments, since it seems that computer users will continue to click on suspicious attachments, no matter how many times they're stung.