MoD claims e-mail virus breakthrough

The Ministry of Defence claims it has developed a tool that could mark the end of the e-mail virus.

Officials say the answer lies in simple software developed to protect highly sensitive Government documents and computer systems.

The system turns the premise of conventional anti-virus security on its head by preventing viruses from spreading once they have infected a computer.

MoD software team leader Simon Wiseman said the Ministry's focus on protecting confidential information enabled them to arrive at an innovative way of tackling the problem.

He said: "While every other anti-virus company has concentrated on stopping things getting in, we are shutting down the propagation channels so that any damage is contained in the machines of those opening the infected message."

The 'Mail' system - the work of the MoD's Defence Evaluation and Research Agency - simply asks users to confirm that outgoing messages are to be sent.

In this way e-mail viruses are prevented from replicating themselves by automatically sending themselves to other machines.

Last year the infamous Iloveyou virus caused an estimated £2 billion of damage by flooding computer systems worldwide with e-mail traffic.

This experience was repeated in February with the Kournikova virus, a self-disseminating e-mail 'worm' that duped victims into believing it was a photo of the tennis star.