Turkish hackers have taken advantage of an email address that appeared in The Simpsons to recruit marks onto the Kimya botnet. Back in 2003, an episode of animated comedy show The Simpsons revealed that Homer Simpson’s e-mail address was chunkylover53@aol.com – an address that was actually registered by one of the show’s writers.

Plenty of people added Chunkylover53 to their AIM buddy list – although the name remained very dormant.

Now Chunkylover53 has turned against its makers and taken on a life of itself as a distributor for the Trojan virus. The email is now sending out auto replies to people who email it, pointing them to the direction of a downloadable ‘brand-new, unseen’ Simpsons episode.

Fans then found their computers were infected with rootkit technology, and added to a botnet of Turkish origin. The message has apparently changed a few times since this first one, with other download links, and even a dating website replacing it. But all of them result in the same thing, the user having their security compromised by hackers of unknown origin.

If you have downloaded any Chunkylover53’s emails run this free malware scan now