A story in Shanghai Interfax reports that a new fast-spreading Trojan virus named Trojan.Legend.Syspoet.b, nicknamed the "Beautiful Killer," has been discovered spreading across China by security software and services company Rising Technology.

Beautiful Killer has been spreading predominantly via the instant messaging application QQ and is hidden within a website link–when the link is opened the computer is infected while displaying a picture of an attractive woman–hence the virus' nickname.

After infection, messages containing the virus link are automatically sent to contacts on the user's QQ account. Within the infected computer, the virus steals or compromises passwords, revises file attributes, destroys Windows Explore, and shuts down anti-virus applications. Other symptoms include modified system configurations, blocked access to system files, and the sending of bulk emails with virus attachments.

According to Rising Technology, Beautiful Killer takes advantage of a picture-processing flaw in IE, which was discovered earlier this year. Microsoft has not yet provided a patch to fix this specific flaw, although IE 6.0SP1 or higher versions of IE are immune from the Killer.