By Elinor Mills
Friday, June 20 2008 10:25 AM
URL: http://www.zdnetasia.com/news/security/0,39044215,62042912,00.htm

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.