As predicted, hackers tried to trick users into downloading the Storm bot Trojan Friday by unleashing a flood of Fourth of July spam bearing links to malicious sites, several security companies reported.

The malware writers behind the botnet often make use of current events and holidays when crafting social engineering attacks, and this year is not expected to be any different.

Emails with subject lines relating to Independence Day and containing links in the form of an IP address have been circulating, with promises of a firework display if you click on the link. However, the link leads to a Storm domain which will infect your PC and turn it into a ‘bot’, churning out spam email without your knowledge.

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