A new Trojan horse is targeting the gamers of one of the webs's online games stealing personal information.

According to security firm Sophos, once a person is infected with the LegMir-Y, the malware attempts to switch-off firewalls and Anti-virus security. The Trojan is then designed to steal usernames and passwords from players of online medieval-themed role-playing game, Lineage.

Graham Clueley, Sophos' senior technology consultant said that while the hackers can steal other gamers credits and use their game accounts, there was nothing stopping hackers also accessing other personal information.

How people are infected is not quite clear according to Cluley, but the problem of online gamers being targeted by virus writers is growing.Other popular multi-player online games whose players have been targeted by viruses and Trojan horses in the past include Outwar and Legend of Mir 2.

Last month, a British youth received a six-month suspended sentence for his part in distributing the Randex worm, with the intention of gaining points in Outwar.

"It is more and more common for the analysts in our virus lab to discover that, as well as causing disruption, a piece of new malware is designed to steal registration keys, passwords and data from players of computer games," he said.

"We expect to see more internet skirmishes between rival online gamers and malicious code to assist this kind of internet robbery in the future."

Sophos recommends computer users ensure their anti-virus software is up-to-date.