Malware writers are hoping that you’ll open that Valentine’s Day card they sent you. Unfortunately, in addition to a greeting, the seemingly innocent “card” will be downloading malicious software to your PC. Once downloaded, your PC will become a bot, or drone, and will then join a “botnet“.

The good news is that these trojan Valentine’s Day cards require you to click on a URL link within the email. That link will then show you festive images (below) while it downloads malicious software such as ‘valentine.exe’. The downloads are constantly changing (morphing) so as to avoid detection by anti-virus software. If ‘valentine.exe’ or similar malicious software is successfully installed, you’ll unknowingly become part of a botnet and will soon be sending spam, attacking other computers, etc.

As always, never click on URL links in unsolicited email messages -and- never download files unless they’re from a known, trusted site. Happy Valentine’s Day and stay out of the botnets!!