Storm worm variant using China quake emails

A US-based IT security watchdog on Thursday issued a clear warning to email users: 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 email inbox.

The group has received reports of a new variant of the Storm worm that targets people interested in the 12 May earthquake that killed nearly 70,000 people and left five million homeless. Some of the emails also have subject lines that deal with the Olympic Games that China is hosting.

In the email is a link that sends a recipient to a malicious website, US-CERT (Computer Emergency Readiness Team) 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 fix for another worm 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 email messages.