Here’s a new twist in the ongoing saga of the Storm worm spam network – it has started delivering fiction into our inboxes. [via Bruce Sterling]

Not science fiction, sadly – that’d make for an even better headline – but fake news headlines. Perhaps in response to people slowly wising up to email subject-lines about fake Rolex watches and “spec14l blu3 p1ll 4 b3dr00m”, the botnet is now replacing them with specious news stories about non-existent natural disasters and celebrity mishaps:

“The emails contain such headlines as ‘Eiffel Tower damaged by massive earthquake’ and ‘Donald Trump missing, feared kidnapped.'”

Pitching for the schadenfreude market, then … we’ll be able to judge the effectiveness of this new tactic by watching for how long they keep using it. [image by El Garza]