Hackers use bird flu e-mails to hijack PCs

Computer are exploiting fears over bird flu by releasing a computer virus attached to an e-mail passing itself off as containing avian flu information, warned a Spanish computer firm, Panda Software.

The virus Naiva.A masquerades as a word document with e-mail subject lines such as "Outbreak in North America" and "What is avian influenza (bird flu)?", the company said on its Web site (www.pandasoftware.com).

When the file is opened, the virus modifies, creates and delete files. A second part of the virus installs a program that allows hackers to gain remote control of infected computers.

The firm said the virus can not spread on its own but needs to be manually distributed via e-mail, Internet downloads or file transfers.

In Brisbane, meanwhile, a UN official said fighting bird flu in Southeast Asian nations could cost US$102 million over the next two to three years.

"If the disease spreads from eastern Europe into Africa, then just for emergency support we'll require an additional US$75 million," said Subhash Morvaria from the UN Food and Agriculture Organization's regional office in Bangkok.

Morvaria nations to fight the disease in birds as a first line of defense against it mutating into a human flu virus.

``As long as the disease remains in the domestic poultry sector, there is going to be a threat to humans. So the focus has to be in the animals. Even if a pandemic occurs, the problem will not go away as long as the disease remains in domestic poultry,'' he said.

International and disaster experts from APEC members, Pacific island nations and the World Health Organization are meeting in Brisbane this week to discuss how to head off the potential crisis.

In other developments, signs of bird flu were detected at a duck farm in western Japan.

Tests 10 ducks suspected of bird flu showed they were infected with an H4 strain of the virus, which has no history of human transmission, according to Katsunori Tanaka, an Osaka livestock farming official.

However, officials were still testing another 47 ducks at the same farm, after preliminary tests showed some of the birds may be infected, Tanaka said.

In Canada, senior officials said on Monday that nearly three dozen wild birds have tested positive for H5 influenza, but also said it is unlikely that it is the H5N1 strain.

They said it would take at least one week to determine whether the flu found in 33 wild ducks from Quebec and Manitoba is the H5N1 strain.

In the US, President George W. Bush was scheduled to unveil a national strategy yesterday to combat the threat of a bird flu pandemic at home and abroad, a White House spokesman said.

The strategy, which Bush will present in a speech at the US National Institutes of Health in Bethesda, Maryland, will focus on preparing stockpiles of protective medicines and pushing efforts to develop a new vaccine, spokesman Scott McClellan said.