BBC NEWS | Technology | E-mail worm throws up hate spam: "E-mail worm throws up hate spam

The original worm offered tickets to the World Cup
A nasty side-effect for machines infected by the recent computer worm Sober-P has been revealed.
The worm has opened up a backdoor for a spam engine which has been downloading hate messages to all infected machines.
The inboxes of affected PCs have been filling with messages linked to right-wing German websites.
Sober-P grabbed attention at the beginning of the month, in Germany and around the world. The German version offered tickets to the 2006 World Cup.
Political spam
Now it has revealed a darker side and since Saturday has been downloading a spam engine - dubbed Sober-Q - which has bulk e-mailed links to right-wing German websites to all the PCs originally infected by Sober-P.
Politically motivated spam is a relatively recent development with the majority of junk e-mail aimed at emptying wallets with offers of porn, health cures and financial assistance.
The fact that the spam engine was kicked into effect by an earlier worm shows a 'long-term desire' on the part of the author, and one that has been successful.
Security firm Clearswift said it was seeing as many as ten right-wing spam messages every minute.
'The original worm was obviously very successful and the volume of spam is huge,' added Clearswift's threat lab manager, Pete Simpson. "