"It is a bit rare and unusual to see viruses deleting files, because it draws too much attention."

Adam Biviano, Trend Micro senior systems engineer, confirmed the virus holds nothing destructive at all in its payload, which is designed to be activated on the third of every month.

Biviano said the virus represents a shift away from malicious code carrying benign payloads towards something even they have not seen in sometime: destroying data to create real damage.

"This is nothing new, a timebomb in a virus, is by no means a new technique," Biviano said.

"The Michelangelo virus in the 90s waited for a specific annual date to do damage, but I have not seen any behave like this for some time. It also saves itself on the hard disk with a filename that looks familiar to the user, or masks itself as a common application."