Royal Navy ships hit by virus

A small number of vessels including HMS Ark Royal have had email and internet service taken down

Some Navy warships have been hit by a virus

A virus attack has shut down Ministry of Defence (MoD) communication and administration systems aboard some Royal Navy warships.

HMS Ark Royal, which left Portsmouth for Liverpool on Monday, was still without some systems yesterday.

The computers infected are part of the NavyStar system used for purposes such as storekeeping, email and internet access. The system connects to wider networks by shore connection when vessels are in harbour and using satellites when at sea.

Various ships have suffered outages of the system over the past fortnight as the MoD attempted to fix the problem. The system is supplied by Fujitsu.

"Since 6 January the performance of the MOD IT systems in a number of areas was affected by a virus. Immediate action was taken to isolate the problem to stop the virus from spreading," said an MoD spokesman.

"This meant that some people were without regular IT access. There have been no infections detected on any networks with sensitive information."