Computer viruses become hacker informants

An emerging breed of computer virus that keeps hackers informed about the latest weaknesses in computer networks has been discovered by security experts.

The viruses infect a computer network, scan for security vulnerabilities and then report back to hackers through an internet chatroom.

Armies of computers infected with "bot" viruses are routinely controlled via a chatroom connection. Typically these machines are used to knock a website offline with a "denial of service attack" or as a conduit for sending out spam email.

However, the ability of some bots to scan their hosts for unpatched security holes and report their findings back to hackers has gone largely unnoticed until now.