The Federal Bureau of Investigation issued a warning Tuesday saying that all the romantics across the United States should be aware of a malicious computer worm spread through Valentine’s Day e-cards. Once the recipient receives the email, he is then directed to click on a link to retrieve an electronic greeting card (e-card).

After the recipient clicks on the link, malware is downloaded to the Internet-connected device and causes it to become infected and part of the Storm Worm botnet. A botnet is a network of compromised machines under the control of a single user.

"The Storm Worm virus has capitalized on various holidays in the last year by sending millions of emails advertising an e-card link within the text of the spam email. Valentine's Day has been identified as the next target," the FBI said, according to the Agence France-Presse.

Apparently, the Storm Worm virus began circulating in January 2007, surfacing in e-mails showing photos of damage from European windstorms. The Storm Worm began infecting thousands of (mostly private) computers in Europe and the United States on Friday, January 19, 2007. It spread using an e-mail message, initially with a subject line about the then-recent weather disaster (windstorm Kyrill): "230 dead as storm batters Europe".

Over the subsequent weekend there were six subsequent waves of the attack, and Monday, January 22, 2007, the Storm Worm accounted for 8 percent of all virus infections globally. The Trojan horse only affects computers using Microsoft operating systems, and was named Storm Worm by Finnish company F-Secure.

Other names include W32/Nuwar@MM (McAfee), Troj/Dorf and Mal/Dorf (Sophos), Trojan.Peacomm (Symantec), TROJ_SMALL.EDW (Trend Micro), Win32/Nuwar (ESET), Win32/Nuwar.N@MM!CME-711 (Windows Live OneCare), W32/Zhelatin (F-Secure and Kaspersky) and Trojan.Peed, Trojan.Tibs (BitDefender).