Google says sorry for potentially giving users sexy virus

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The search giant apologises for Kama Sutra posts that may have given some users a nasty infection

Google has apologised for an internal error that may have caused fans of its popular video site to inadvertently download the Kama Sutra virus.

On Tuesday this week, three items were posted on the Google Video blog that may have contained the mass mailing worm, officially called W32/Kasper.A@mm, which obliterates registry keys and files.

The red-faced search giant says the problem has since been rectified but was forced to publicly say sorry to affected downloaders.

It is unclear how many of the blog's 50,000 subscribers were hit by the error.

The company urged concerned users to run an antivirus check to remove any potential infection, either using their own software or by downloading the Google Pack, which contains Symantec's Norton AntiVirus software.

"An internal moderator of a list inadvertently allowed a couple of outside messages, which contained a virus, to be sent to the Google Video list," a Google spokesperson told IT PRO.

Maggie Holland
Maggie Holland

Maggie has been a journalist since 1999, starting her career as an editorial assistant on then-weekly magazine Computing, before working her way up to senior reporter level. In 2006, just weeks before ITPro was launched, Maggie joined Dennis Publishing as a reporter. Having worked her way up to editor of ITPro, she was appointed group editor of CloudPro and ITPro in April 2012. She became the editorial director and took responsibility for ChannelPro, in 2016.

Her areas of particular interest, aside from cloud, include management and C-level issues, the business value of technology, green and environmental issues and careers to name but a few.