"At this stage it's not alarming, but it could grow in the next couple of days. It has potential to be a big outbreak," he said.
The worm spreads through a self-mailing email convincing users to run a malicious attachment that installs a Trojan on their machine.
Kaminski told ZDNet Australia that the local effect of the new virus is very easy to measure because it spreads by replying to messages in the victim's inbox, and not their address book. This means that the virus effectively "reports itself" to CA by automatically replying to one of their tech-support emails or other day to day communications between them and their clients.
In the case of the Klez worm, Kaminski says that CA received more accidental reports than deliberate ones.
The most alarming aspect of this new virus is that it installs a backdoor Trojan that is very easy to use, and then automatically emails the worm author to notify them of the location of the infected machine.
The worm writer, or anyone else for that matter, can then enter the infected system with ease. The Trojan will not affect systems located behind a firewall.
Despite the worm mailing data to a known email address in China, Kaminski says there is little chance of the culprit being caught.
"I would say - none," he said.
