Obama sex video? Hardly. It's spyware spreading via e-mail

Don't believe everything you read on the Internet: Democratic presidential candidate Barack Obama isn't a terrorist...or a porn star.

A malicious spam e-mail is spreading that claims to have a link to a sex video of Obama but is instead spyware that steals sensitive data from the computer, security firm Sophos warned on Wednesday.

The subject line says "Obama sex video!!!" and the e-mail appears to come from "infonews@obama.com, Graham Cluley, senior technology consultant at Sophos, says on his blog.

Clicking on the link downloads an executable file that plays an amateur porn video, but Obama is not in it.

Meanwhile, behind the scenes a Trojan horse known as Mal/Hupig-D is installed. The Trojan targets Windows machines and steals passwords and bank account data, Cluley said.

Is it the work of the Republicans? Probably not; it has the trademark bad grammar and excessive punctuation of traditional phishing attempts, many of which originate outside English-speaking countries.