Sober, which is a popular virus that has been roaming the Internet since 2003 and controls thousands of infected machines online, took a new turn over the weekend when it started sending out millions of spam messages related to German political views to users globally.

According to security reports, the author decided to use the infected computers and requested them to download a newer version of Sober, codenamed Sober-Q, which would later send out tens of millions of spam messages over the weekend. Security experts said the worm is not critical and isn’t designed to spread. It’s merely for sending out millions of spam messages to depict a certain political view.

The e-mail messages contain links to various stories on legitimate German news websites, and according to spam analysts, there are potentially 72 variants of the spam.

However, security firms said there’s nothing to worry about in terms of security. And many of them consider this to be a one-time deal at best. "It is a one-time political message," said Vincent Gullotto, Vice President, Virus Research Lab, McAfee. Security experts also said that certain news links dated back to mid-1900s.

Stephen White, Head, Anti-Spam Technical Operations, MessageLabs said, "Almost all of the spam e-mails have been sent from otherwise clean IP addresses and will have gone largely undetected by spam filters." He further added, "It would seem that the virus author has stored up networks of infected machines around the world, holding them on standby to deploy at specific times."

Symantec’s Alfred Hugher speculated that infected machines were probably sending out 10,000 spam messages per hour.

Though there’s not a security risk involved, all security firms said that many users will have to dig through hundreds of spam mail in order to find their important e-mail messages.