The malicious Storm virus is back, this time infecting Google's Blogger website through fake postings that trick people into download software that can take over their computers.

Hackers are then mining infected computers for valuable data, or using them for other attacks.

The blog entries have the same text as that used by the Storm spam e-mail earlier this year that lured people into clicking on links that then infected their computers. Security researchers say the virus, which originated in January as spam promising information about a winter storm in northern Europe, has since infected 1.3 million machines.

The fake blog entries use text such as, "Dude don't send that stuff to my home e-mail …" or "OMG, what are you thinking," while some include links that supposedly lead to YouTube videos. Other entries claim to be looking for software testers or present themselves as links to digital greeting cards.

Google has not yet commented on the attack.

Alex Eckelberry, president of security firm Sunbelt Software, first noticed the latest attack and blogged about it on Monday. He could not explain how it happened, but guessed that hackers used Blogger's ability to send e-mail through a posting.

"What it really shows to me is how pernicious these guys are and they're indefatigable in trying to get into every place," he told The Register. "This is a voracious, voracious worm. I don't think anybody in malware research has seen anything like Storm."