Researchers from security firms MX Logic Inc. and F-Secure said that the bot delivers e-mails that include one of dozens of tantalizing subject lines, including:
• White House hit by lightning.
• Obama drops out of presidential race.
• Italy knocked out of Euro 2008.
• Man wakes up from 40-year coma.
If a surfer clicks the link, they will find themselves at a fake adult site bearing the name "PornTube," where they'll be prompted to download a video plugin. The plugin is actually the spam bot, which will continue replicating itself if downloaded.
The PornTube site depicted in the spam messages is not affiliated with the actual adult video-sharing site PornTube.com.
According to researchers, the spam bot is actually another form of an old Trojan horse called Storm, which infects thousands of computers in an effort to make them all a part of the same virtual network. Spammers and hackers then use the network as a platform to distribute more scams.
F-Secure has posted all of the suspicious subject lines, as well as additional information, on its blog.
MX Logic said that the current spam attack has distributed about 8 million emails in less than a week.