Despite cleaning operation, computer virus spread over weekend

Three hundred employees at the country’s biggest company cannot carry out their work due to the rapid spread of a computer virus.

Representatives from A.P. Moller-Maersk said an attack by Sality – a malicious programme that spreads by attacking certain files – went from bad to worse as the initial infection spread from 80 machines last week to 300 this week.

While some employees can no longer work because of the virus attack, others have been called back from holiday to clean the infected computers and reinstall them.

On Friday Kim Aarenstrup, head of IT security at Maersk, told Computerworld magazine that the Sality virus had been stopped in its tracks and that everything would soon be back to normal.

But his prediction turned out to be over optimistic as the malicious virus, which can disable antivirus software and prevent access to antivirus and security websites, went on a new rampage over the weekend.

‘[The infection] was a bit more extensive than we first thought and this was simply because some of the machines affected broke down and failed to report that they had been infected,’ he explained.