The destructive worm computer virus that is zipping around the world has reared its poison head in Bermuda.

A spokeswoman for Internet service provider Logic Communications confirmed it had received a frantic plea for help from at least one corporate client regarding the Worm.ExploreZip infection.

In the US the FBI are trying to track down the inventor of the virus which appears as a friendly e-mail from an acquaintance to trick the recipient into opening an attached file and letting the beast loose. The worm then sends a copy of itself to the sender of any arriving e-mail and also destroys files stored on the original computer, including backbone products used in many offices like Microsoft Word, Excel and PowerPoint.

Logic Communications alerted its virus-buster technical team after staff members at the business concerned became suspicious that their system was under attack from the killer worm, the spokeswoman said.

But at Press time yesterday it appeared the incident was "relatively minor'' and Bermuda had so far escaped the levels of damage evident in horror stories emanating from victims of the virus around the world.

Bermuda spared worst of powerful computer virus Computer systems at several multi-national corporations were infected last week including the World Bank, General Electric, AT&T, Boeing and even Microsoft.

In New York yesterday computer support lines were reportedly overwhelmed with calls reporting new outbreaks of the software virus which spreads not only by e-mail, but also through shared files on a network.

It is understood to target computers using Microsoft Windows.

Logic Communications e-mailed customers detailed instructions of how to detect and remove the virus if it did strike. And it also explained how to ensure any such attack had "limited effect''.

The help desk of the Island's other Internet service provider North Rock Communications said no victims of the virus had called in by last night.

But Bermuda may not be in the clear just yet since the flow of nervous calls to computer support lines was even heavier in the US yesterday than it was last week when the virus was first thought to have peaked.

Experts suspect the worm originated in Israel on June 6 before wriggling its way into computers on every continent of the globe.

Computer experts admitted in New York yesterday their hopes of containing the computer-file-eating virus as quickly as April's Melissa outbreak was harnessed looked unlikely.

And that is particularly bad news since the worm is more dangerous than Melissa was as it not only clogs e-mail servers with high volumes of traffic but also seeks out and destroys files on hard and network drives.

A leading anti-virus team warned the new file-destroying virus was more virulent than first understood, since it spread not only via e-mails but also "wormed'' its way into other computers linked to the same network server.

One technician said that once present on a computer the virus "behaved as a worm, propagating itself, without any human interaction, to other networked machines.''