Spammers and hackers are using the slayings at Virginia Tech as a gory lure to infect computers with malicious software, security experts noted Thursday.

While the video made by gunman Cho Seung-hui prior to the killing of 33 people on Monday was widely posted on news Web sites and YouTube.com, spam e-mails were intercepted Wednesday night purporting to link to the footage on a Brazilian Web site, said Graham Cluley, senior technology consultant, at security vendor Sophos PLC.

If clicked, the link caused a computer to automatically download a malicious screensaver, called TERROR_EM_VIRGINIA.scr by Sophos, which installs a Trojan horse program that collects banking details, Cluley said.

continued @ PCWorld.com