Virus writers take advantage of last week's storms

Emails claiming to contain details of the storms that battered Europe contain a malicious virus, security firms are warning.

Emails with the subject line '230 dead as storm batters Europe' can leave computers vulnerable to attack, according to vendor F-Secure. The messages were first detected as the storms, which have killed at least 28 people, were still raging.

Variants of the virus have circulated for a number of days, but experts say they were surprised at how quickly the new modified virus appeared.

'The new virus only started spreading a few hours ago,' said Mikko Hypponen, chief research officer at security firm F-Secure. 'The spamming started when the storms were still raging.'

Hypponen believes the adaptation was designed to take advantage of the interest in the storms and that the virus writers were probably looking to recruit computer for a botnet. Users would not be aware that their computer was infected.

F-secure says it has seen 'hundreds of thousands of emails sent' but does not know how many machines were infected.

'How many people clicked on it? It could be thousands or tens of thousands,' said Hypponen.

What do you think? Email us at: feedback@computing.co.uk

Further Reading:

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Email gives way to new virus distribution tactics

Virus analysts fight growing deluge