A new variant of the Sober worm has begun to flood inboxes with hundreds, and even thousands, of junk messages that link to news stories about Sober. Dubbed Sober.Q, the variant is being spread by computers infected with Sober.N, which posed as tickets for the 2006 World Cup in Germany.

Sober.Q messages contain various subject lines in German, including: 'Dresden Bombing Is To Be Regretted Enormously', 'Armenian Genocide Plagues Ankara 90 Years On', 'Dresden 1945' and 'Turkish Tabloid Enrages Germany with Nazi Comparisons'.

Because Sober.Q is spreading through previously infected PCs, antivirus firms say the virus authors may have remote control over tens of thousands of machines. The messages also include the text: 'I'm not a spammer, but perhaps I should become one :)'.

"By including links to news stories about previous variants of the Sober worms, it seems that the author is looking for notoriety, but it's unlikely that the thousands deluged with this spam will take kindly to his tactics," said Graham Cluley, senior technology consultant at Sophos.

"This latest piece of malware highlights the links between virus writers and spammers and reinforces the need for everyone to deploy regularly updated anti-virus and anti-spam software as well as a firewall."

E-mail security firm MX Logic says it has seen 125,000 instances of the Sober.Q worm and has deemed the variant "high severity."