Watch out for Valentine's Day spam

The potential for email spam on Valentine's Day is so great that even the FBI is getting involved. "With the holiday approaching, be on the lookout for spam e-mails spreading the Storm Worm malicious software," the FBI said in an alert posted to the home page of its Web site on Feb. 12. "The Storm Worm virus has capitalized on various holidays in the last year by sending millions of e-mails advertising an e-card link within the text of the spam e-mail. Valentine's Day has been identified as the next target."

The FBI was late in issuing its warning, according to an article in ComputerWorld. For several weeks, security vendors have been warning that the worm would use this romantic holiday to trick computer users into opening attachments or clicking links, letting the culprits in the door. Last year, the botnet Trojan made its first splash in January 2007, and researchers have long expected its return this Valentine's Day as well.

That's exactly how things have played out in the days leading to Feb. 14. Trend Micro's David Sancho spelled it out in a post to the company's blog on Monday, giving employees a short warning of what might be coming instead of flowers and chocolates. "The spammed e-mail messages are just plain text, but contain links that lead to malicious Web sites displaying one of eight cute Valentine images," Sancho said. "If you run the executable named 'valentine.exe,' your system will join the Storm botnet to start spamming other Internet users." "Not very loving of them," Sancho concluded.

For more on Valentine's Day spam:
- See this ComputerWorld article