If you want information about the earthquake in China get it from a news site and not from a link to a video that arrives in your e-mail inbox.
That's the message from the US-CERT (Computer Emergency Readiness Team) on Thursday.
US-CERT has received reports of a new variant of the Storm Worm that targets people interested in the May 12 earthquake that killed nearly 70,000 people and left 5 million homeless. Some of the e-mail messages also have subject lines that deal with the Olympic Games that China is hosting.
In the e-mail is a link that sends a recipient to a malicious Web site, US-CERT says. Opening the purported video link on the site runs executable code that infects the computer with malicious code that can be used to turn the machine into a zombie on a spam botnet.
Previous versions have used April's Fools Day and Valentine's Day themes, as well as masqueraded as a fix for another worm to lure victims to sites.
As always, computer owners and administrators are urged to install and update anti-virus software and to not follow unsolicited Web links received in e-mail messages.
This article was first published as a blog on CNET News.com.
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