The so-called “romantic” email provides users with the warmth of a relationship with the Dorf Trojan (also known as Storm) and leads the victims to dangerous websites. Sophos warns users to be on the lookout for subject lines striking as oddly romantic: "Falling In Love with You", "Special Romance", "You’re In My Thoughts", "Sent with Love", "Our Love Will Last", "Our Love is Strong" and so on. No need to memorize them, as they seem to be part of a very wide range.
The email includes a link to n IP-address based website, which displays a large red heart, while installing malware onto the visitors’ PC. In fact, the site is actually an infected PC in the Storm botnet.
"This heart attack has been spammed out on a huge scale by an organized gang hellbent on stealing access to your PC for criminal purposes. It seems the hackers were too impatient to wait for St Valentine’s Day this year before plucking on heart strings in their attempt to infect the unwary," said Graham Cluley, senior technology consultant. "People will be truly love sick if they let the malicious code run on their PC."
According to Sophos, the worm code is designed to attempt to download further malicious code from the internet designed to take over the PC, convert it into part of a zombie network, and use it to send more spam.