I Love You, So I’ll Destroy Your Computer

Security experts are warning people that there are a rash of malicious emails with cute subject lines meant to get you to open them. Whereupon, they install a trojan on your computer. Happy Valentine's Day!

"Computer users should keep a wary eye on any romantic messages received by e-mail, as many of them could contain malicious code," said US security firm PandaLabs after detecting an increase in a worm it dubbed Nurech.A.

The worm hides in e-mails with subjects like: "Together You and I," "Til the End of Time Heart of Mine."

People who open an attached file such as postcard.exe can end up infecting their computers.

Security firm Symantec said it had detected "large-scale spamming" of e-mails including a Trojan horse, a program that contains or installs a malicious program.

Symantec said the malware was a new version of Trojan, Peacomm or the "Storm Trojan."

"With Valentine's Day approaching, this time around the authors are attempting to tug on the heartstrings of unsuspecting users with romantic subject lines such as 'My Heart belongs to you,' said Symantec's Orla Cox.

"The Trojan is much the same as we've seen before, the only difference being that the authors have used a modified packer in an (unsuccessful) effort to evade detection by antivirus vendors."

"As a general rule, don't open any suspicious e-mail, regardless of what is says it contains," said Luis Corrons, technical director of PandaLabs.

I make it a rule to never - and I mean never - open any .exe file attached to an email, even if I know the person who sent it. I'll ask people to point me to where they got the file if I'm really interested. But I sure won't forward anything like that on, either. Anyway, if you get what looks like an electronic love letter, it may not be what it looks like. Consider yourself warned.