A mass-mailing computer virus compromised a moderate number of PCs worldwide on Monday, installing a Trojan horse program that allows a remote intruder easy access to a victim's system, said antivirus experts.

Known as Lovegate, the LovGate.C program has many similarities to previous viruses: It is a binary program; it has its own email engine, obviating the need to use another program such as Microsoft Outlook to send messages; and it attempts to use 16 simple passwords to break into and spread to other computers on the victim's network.

"In terms of the technology that it uses, all the individual capabilities have been seen before," said Steve Trilling, senior director of research for security software company Symantec. The worm is a variant of the LovGate.A virus, also known as w32.lovegate@m, which was first seen on the Internet last week.

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