Don't fall victim to the St Valentine's Day malware massacre

Don't fall victim to the St Valentine's Day malware massacre
Sophos reports on a storm of emails with cruel intentions

Don't be a stupid cupid - the Dorf-AW worm has been planted on websites carrying romantic images.

Companies and consumers have been warned to be aware of the dangers of emailed Valentine's in the run-up to romantic celebrations on February 14th. Millions of emails are expected to be sent in the run-up to St Valentine's Day, and some of them will include malicious viral attachments or link to dangerous websites.

IT security firm Sophos has reported that virus writers are increasingly using psychological temptations such as love, money and lust to encourage innocent users to activate malicious code.

The latest example seen by Sophos experts is a romantically-themed email which directs unsuspecting computer users to a website containing romantic images, alongside a variant of the Dorf malware (W32/Dorf-AW, also known as Storm).

Emails with subject lines such as "I Like You", "Powerful Love", "Tower of Love", "You Stay In My Heart", "Hugs And Kisses", "Val-ANT-ines", "Just You", "What is Love?", "The Love Train", "My Heart", "You're My Valentine", "Just You", "My Love For You", "Love Rose", "World Love", "You Stay In My Heart", "A Rose To Say...", "I Love You", "Valentine Friends", "Love Rose", "Thinking Of U All Day", "Valentine Invitation", and "Happy Valentine's Day!" actually link to a website designed to surreptiously infect and take control over PCs. Once a personal computer has been compromised it can be used to send further spam, launch denial-of-service attacks, or commit identity theft.

From Sophos website.