A mass-mailing worm designed to fool computer users into believing that pornographic content has been found on their PC is instead a gateway for hackers to gain remote access to compromised computers, antivirus experts today warned.

The Baba-C worm (W32/Baba-C) spreads via email, duping innocent users into believing that it is a warning about 'XXX content' found on their Windows PCs. Users are told that this adult material can be hidden by running a program called Evidence Cleaner.

However, in reality, no pornographic content has been found on the PC, and clicking on the attached file runs the worm which will attempt to forward itself to other email addresses, and open a backdoor for hackers to gain access to the system.