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The email purports to come from eBay, which recently acquired Skype in a multi-billion dollar deal, and says that an update is required to restore an allegedly suspended eBay account. Launching the attached .exe bearing the Skype icon installs the 'locksky' trojan. The trojan records and stores keyboard strokes, potentially giving the creator access to passwords and other sensitive information.

The phishing email has been reported by SoftScan, a spam and virus filter provider, which notes that although it is not prevalent in the wild, there is evidence of increased activity and several variants have been detected.

'Skype is extremely popular for VoIP and virus writers are exploiting this as they do with any widely used medium,' said Bo Engelbrechtsen, corporate communications manager of SoftScan. 'The fact that there are so many variants, yet few infections, is evidence that the author is not achieving the success he was hoping for.'

As is the case with other trojans, the author can download information from the victim's machine and install updates to the trojan.