Evil Trojan E-mails

Tattoo the phrase above on the back of your hand where you will see it every time you open an email!

I have been getting a lot of spam e-mails wanting me to click on things to "confirm" a subscription or "view" a greeting card. Now there's another one out there using the popularity of YouTube videos.

Security pros are warning that spammers are distributing the Storm Trojan via e-mails supposedly coming from friends and containing a false link to a YouTube video.

Contained in e-mails with subject lines such as "sheesh man what are you thinking," the malicious link claims to go to YouTube.com, but actually goes to a URL harboring exploit code. The e-mail has a variety of subjects and body text but always contains a hidden link to a Web site infected with the Storm Trojan.

Clicking on the attachment associated with this particular attack will infect your machine and it creates a back door that the virus creators can exploit anytime they want...usually looking for your personal identity and banking information.

This same evil group is also the one responsible for all the emails saying you've received a greeting card, those referencing a major storm in Europe or a nuclear act of terrorism, and some appear to come from a legitimate organization and offer you a temporary login confirmation details for a Web site. The spam uses text such as "for security purposes, please login and change the temporary Login ID and Password" and includes a link to an IP address that is actually a Web site infected with the Storm Trojan.

Here's a link to the alert and a link to the article in eWEEK magazine.

Stay safe,
Catriona