“An e-mail-borne virus that apparently originated in Germany is in the wild but has not yet spread widely or affected many users, an antivirus researcher said Monday.

The worm-type virus, called W32/Sober@MM, or Sober, is being spread as an attachment to a variety of e-mail messages written in either English or German, said Craig Schmugar, a virus research engineer at McAfee Security, a division of Network Associates Inc., in Santa Clara, Calif. Some of those e-mail messages identify the attachment as an update to Kaspersky Labs Ltd. or Symantec Corp. Norton AntiVirus software, he said.

McAfee classified the virus as ‘low-profiled’ in the late afternoon Monday, Pacific Time. Fewer than 20 corporate customers had been affected and most copies of the virus received by McAfee had been sent by the virus itself directly to a McAfee e-mail address for reporting of viruses, Schmugar said. They had not been sent in by customers who had been hit by it. The spread had so far been fairly restricted to Germany, he said.”