Storm worm version uses China earthquake to lure victims
Storm worm rears head in form of video link about China earthquake.
If you want information about the earthquake in China get it from a news site and not from a link to a video that arrives in your e-mail inbox.
That's the message from the US-CERT (Computer Emergency Readiness Team) on Thursday.
The group has received reports of a new variant of the Storm worm that targets people interested in the May 12 earthquake that killed nearly 70,000 people and left 5 million homeless. Some of the e-mails also have subject lines that deal with the Olympic Games that China is hosting.
In the e-mail is a link that sends a recipient to a malicious Web site, US-CERT says. Opening the purported video link on the site runs executable code that infects the computer with malicious code that can be used to turn the machine into a zombie on a spam botnet.
Previous versions have used April Fools' Day and Valentine's Day themes, as well as masqueraded as a to lure victims to sites.
As always, computer owners and administrators are urged to install and update antivirus software and to not follow unsolicited Web links received in e-mail messages.