IT security experts have identified a Trojan house virus that has been infecting email accounts around the world.

The Kukudro-A virus uses a variety of subject lines including 'worth to see', 'prices', 'Hello', and 'Hi'.

It is currently the number one reported malware to Sophos's network of monitoring stations, accounting for 35 percent of all malware reports in the last 24 hours.

Attached to the email is a zip file, variously called prices.zip, apple_prices.zip or sony_prices.zip, which contains a malicious Microsoft Word document entitled 'my_Notebook.doc', which includes information about Apple, HP and Sony laptop computers for sale.

When opened the Word document attempts to install another Trojan horse, called Kuku-A, onto the user's hard drive, which can lead to hacker's gaining access to users' PCs.

The body of the message reads as follows, with 'name' and 'email address' changing:
"Hello 'name'
Regards, 'name' 'email address'."

It is believed the author behind the virus is the same person who has been writing the Sality worms, which log keystrokes to steal information from computer users.

'This malware is being aggressively spammed out in an attempt to break into innocent users' computers. The Trojan horse will try and download further code from the internet which could allow hackers to gain access to the computer in order to spy, steal and cause havoc,' said Graham Cluley, senior technology consultant at Sophos.