Beckham Trojan recruits zombie army

A new attempt to entice users to download a malicious Trojan horse has been discovered after it was posted on a swathe of internet news groups over the weekend.

The message claims to contain pictures of English footballer David Beckham caught in a compromising position with "a Spanish hooker", but when the file is opened it instead installs the Hackarmy Trojan horse.

This program turns a PC into a "zombie" computer that can be controlled remotely by hackers, and used to distribute spam or launch denial of service attacks.

Graham Cluley, senior technology consultant for antivirus firm Sophos, said the file has been posted to thousands of different news sites.

This is not the first time the Hackarmy virus writer has used pictures of celebrities to recruit zombie computers. In the past internet postings have advertised pictures of singer Britney Spears, or Osama Bin Laden, according to Cluley.

Ingrid marson writes for ZDNet UK