Experts warn of new internet attack

Computer industry experts have warned of a mysterious, large-scale internet attack against thousands of popular websites.

The virus-like infection tries to implant hacker software on to the computers of all website visitors.

Industry experts and the US Homeland Security Department in Chicago are studying the infection to determine how it spreads across websites and find adequate defences against it.

“Users should be aware that any website, even those that may be trusted by the user, may be affected by this activity and thus contain potentially malicious code,” a spokesman said.

The mysterious infection has affected at least one recent version of software by Microsoft.

Experts said the attacks were unusually broad but were not substantially interfering with internet traffic.

Experts recommended consumers and corporate employees to update the antivirus software on their computers, since the latest versions can immunise visitors to infected websites.