Halloween E-mail Delivers "Storm" Trick and No Treat

Security experts are warning about Halloween themed e-mail greetings that direct recipients to a Web page where the Storm malware can be downloaded. It is the latest ploy by Storm proliferators to capitalize on current events, say experts.

According to MX Logic the subject line varies with reports that many contain the phrases "Nothing is funnier this Halloween," "Make him dance," and "Dancing Bones." If you're duped into opening and clicking on what looks like an e-greeting card you are directed to a Web site where users are prompted to download a file called "halloween.exe" which bills itself as a Halloween game.

If your PC's security patches are up to date as of April, you're safe. If you're protected the malicious site will alternatively prompt you to download software to view the e-greeting card. As you may guess, once you download the Web site's payload you're hit with the exploit package.

This is the latest iteration of the ongoing and prolific Storm Worm attack. Storm Worm isn't actually a worm; it's a bot, used to corral infected computers together into a network called a botnet, which can then be issued commands by a central criminal controller. One common command is to send vast amounts of spam. The latest iteration of Storm botnets use encrypted peer-to-peer communications to hide its origins.

Storm started to gather steam near the end of June, when large numbers of e-mail posing as greeting cards reached users. Those behind Storm have capitalized on current events and affinity groups. Storm has believed to have reach critical mass just before July 4, when holiday subject lines tempted large numbers of users to click through. Other targets have included users of YouTube.

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