Valentine's Day spamming up a Storm

The Storm botnet is sharing the love this week with a new spam run aimed at taking the romance out of Valentine's Day.

Security firm MessageLabs said that Valentine's Day spam currently accounts for almost two per cent of all spam sent globally on a daily basis.

The vast majority of these messages contain a header like 'Looking for that perfect Valentine's Day gift?' or 'Make Valentine's Day Night a memorable one'.

A hyperlink embedded in the body of the email points to a VPXL spam website. VPXL is the herbal formula purporting to be an enlargement supplement for men.

This new wave is different to the spam run seen in January, which included love messages rather than Valentine's specific text.

Although Valentine's Day is proving to be another opportunity for spammers to capitalise on their victims, overall spam levels have dropped marginally from their December high to account for 96.8 per cent of all email scanned during January by SoftScan.

Although some of the reduction is down to infected machines being replaced with 'clean' computers at Christmas, SoftScan does not believe that the remaining drop is significant, and is more likely a lull before the next surge.

"There is nothing to indicate that this reduction in spamming activity is long term," said Diego d'Ambra, chief technology officer at SoftScan.

"Either the spammers are content with the data they have collected so far and don't see the need for sending large waves of spam, or they are busy working on new tactics.

"Although we do not expect to see a return to December's levels just yet, it will only be a matter of months."