A new computer virus causing E-mail systems to crash worldwide has paralysed at least one Bermuda company and invaded other systems on the Island. And the end may not be in sight according to experts.

Yesterday two local computer firms on the Island reported they were busy helping clients deal with the Melissa virus which infects companies' E-mail systems.

Melissa takes advantage of users' E-mail address books to replicate extremely quickly and can tie up networks or cause them to crash. It works with Word 97 and Word 2000 programs and will send documents to addresses on the users' mailboxes.

TrendMicro, a virus protection company, was warning yesterday that 20 to 30 variants of the virus could show up today, making filtering the virus at the E-mail server level even more difficult.

While the virus does not destroy data it has the potential to leak confidential documents via E-mail.

MM&I chief technology officer Michael Moniz said one international client, which he did not name, had to shut down operations for half a day while the computer system was cleansed of the virus. Luckily the company had made a regular backup tape of its data on Friday evening. The virus entered the computer system through an E-mail sent on Saturday. MM&I recommended that the company completely destroy all data on its systems and use the backup tape to put the data back in -- after it had been checked for the virus.

"The network was not available and they lost quite a bit of data,'' Mr. Moniz said.

He said MM&I's clients had been contacted last week and advised what to do about the new virus. However, this company's systems technician had been away for the week.

Paragon Bermuda Ltd. director Graham Pearson said the company's employee responsible for security was currently out on calls to help clients rid their systems of the virus.

Paragon itself received the virus by E-mail but was ready for the invasion.

The company's security protection, called a "firewall'' detected the virus before it could get into the system. He said companies needed to ensure their virus checkers were set every night to check for new fixes on the Internet every night so their systems were constantly on the alert for new ones.

A spokesperson at Bermuda Microsystems said they hadn't received any calls about the virus. Bermuda Computer Services also had not received any calls by late afternoon yesterday.

Virus invades Island An employee had received the virus but the system caught the initial invasion.

The Bank of Bermuda Ltd. and the Bank of N.T. Butterfield and Son Ltd.

reported the virus had not infected the companies. Since the alert was given last week many companies have been preparing for the virus.

Around the world experts are reporting that hundreds of companies were affected by the Melissa virus. Jeff Carpenter, a team leader for the Computer Emergency Response Team at Carnegie Mellon University in Pittsburgh, estimated that more than 100,000 computers and hundreds of companies had been infected by the virus.

Security experts had warned computer users that Melissa messages usually contain the subject line "Important message''. The body says "Here is that document you asked for. ..don't show it to anyone else'' with a winking smiley face formed by the punctuation marks ;-).

The virus can crash E-mail systems because it directs computers to send more infected documents into cyberspace in great numbers, security experts said.

And recipients may think they are receiving E-mail from a friend because the virus plunders address books.

However, the virus apparently causes no direct damage to a computer's memory or programs. Melissa is a macro, a computer script for automating tasks in the creation of documents written in Microsoft's Word, a word processing program.

It uses Microsoft's Outlook E-mail program to send a document to the first 50 addresses in the user's address book.

All new Word documents created on an infected computer will contain the virus, too. And every time a Word document is opened after that, the document -- and its potentially sensitive information -- will be sent to 50 other people.

Among the organisations that said they were affected to at least some degree were DuPont, Lockheed Martin, Honeywell Inc., and Compaq Computer Corp.

At Lockheed Martin, the virus was noticed late Friday afternoon when E-mail traffic increased dramatically and the network became overloaded.

Microsoft was among the companies hit by the virus, but it suffered no problems. The company limited its E-mail transmissions and didn't lose any confidential information.

Several antivirus software makers, including McAfee, Symantec, Trend Micro and Sophos, posted patches on their Web sites to detect and reject the virus.

People can also protect themselves by not opening e-mail attachments.

WHAT TO LOOK FOR ca-25 What to look for Melissa messages usually contain the subject line `Important message'. The body says `Here is that document you asked for...don't show it to anyone else' with a winking smiley face formed by the punctuation marks ;-).