Thought you might have been in trouble with the CIA? Or maybe you thought you missed your date with Paris Hilton? You’re not alone.

The biggest virus outbreak ever surfaced late last month. Apparently sending email from the CIA, FBI, Paris Hilton and Nicole Ritchie is a sure fire way to garner attention.

The latest virus, a variant of the Sober virus that first hit inboxes more than two years ago, arrived in attachments to emails that appeared to come from post@fbi.gov, mail@fbi.gov or office@cia.gov. Email subject lines included things like “you visit illegal websites”, “your password” or “Paris Hilton and Nicole Ritchie”.

Email security provider Postini, quarantined more than 218 million Sober-infected viruses in the last week of November—more than four times the 50 million messages that it averages per month. The virus was so bad that it even began threatening corporate email gateways due to the sheer number of messages generated by infected PCs.

Security experts suggest that social engineering played a big part in the virus’ success. Like other well-known attacks such as the Love Letter or the Kornikova, when opened the Sober virus forwarded itself to all everyone in that users’ contact list, causing the virus to grow at a rapid rate.

According to Postini this round of attacks was twice as large as the biggest prior attack. “This Sober generated close to a 1,500 increase in virus-infected email traffic,” said Scott Petry, vice president of Postini’s products and engineering division. At its outbreak peak, one in every 13 emails was Sober-infected.

And Australia was not spared. Some Aussies were burdened with hundreds of emails within a 24 hour period. Luckily patches for the virus are now available.