Storm warning over e-cards

If you receive an unexpected electronic greeting in your Inbox be very careful about opening it.

Security firm F-Secure is warning that the Storm Trojan has been seen in the wild again, after making several appearances recently at occasions such as Christmas, New Year and Valentine's Day.

Emails with subject lines such as 'Check out your ecard' containing a link to a website are actually attempting to infect you with the Trojan.

If successful, the hackers can take over your PC and turn it into a 'bot' - pumping out more spam email without the owner's knowledge.

The link in the emails takes you to a web page with a picture that can be clicked on. However, this will initiate the download of a file called e-card.exe which contains the Trojan.

A link in the email asks you to click on it if the download does not begin - if you do, the same file will be downloaded to your PC.

You're not safe even if you don't click on anything - simply waiting will initiate the download of a file called postcard.exe, which contains a similar payload.

"The files are variable but they always do the same: infect your system with the latest Storm variant," said F-Secure's Mikko Hypponen.

The Storm Trojan, otherwise known as Dorf or Nuwar, has been seen elsewhere recently - Sophos warned of another attack by cybercriminals attempting to disguise it as a New Year greeting.

It has also been passed off as a Valentine's Day greeting - however, these emails began circulating nearly a month before 14 February.

It got its ominous nickname when it began circulating hidden in emails with subject lines relating to the freak weather seen in many parts of Europe last year.

www.f-secure.co.uk