Email hackers are using a fake news alert claiming Prime Minister John Howard suffered a heart attack in an attempt to steal personal information from Australian PC users.

The email features a news report falsely claiming to come from The Australian newspaper's online edition and which includes links to malicious websites.

The news report, which is written in less-than-perfect English, claims the prime minister had suffered a heart attack and that surgeons were working to save his life.

"The Prime Minister of Australia, John Howard have (sic) survived a heart attack," the email reads.

"Mr Howard, 67 years old, was at Kirribilli House in Sydney, his prime residence, when he was suddenly stricken.

"Mr Howard was taken to the Royal North Shore Hospital where the best surgeons of Australia are struggling for his life."

Anyone clicking on links on the bogus report risks importing a virus.

The Australian Computer Emergency Response Team (AusCERT) said on Tuesday it is not yet clear how many systems have been infected.

However, the virus, first reported on Monday, resembles previous attacks on Australian PCs.

Last year, a trojan virus known as Haxdor accompanied an email claiming the National Australia Bank had gone bankrupt.

Nationally, Haxdor infected about 10,000 systems over a period of several months.

More recently, another malicious email also carried a report suggesting Mr Howard's life was in danger.

MacLeonard Starkey from AusCERT said the John Howard email was part of a broader trend in spamming that used topical events to *** in a broad mass of victims.

"Everyone that loves him wants to click on it, everybody that hates him wants to click on it so it's a fairly good all round one," Mr Starkey said.

"When you did click on those links, you were redirected to a page that contained some JavaScript that has been modified in such a way that even a reasonably technical user wouldn't be able to decipher what was going on just by looking at it.

"That then pointed you to another server that installed some malicious code on your computer and that is believed to be stealing online credentials at this point."

Once installed, the program is able to log any keyboard sequences or mouse clicks that a user may enter - including personal identification numbers used on bank websites - and change security settings.

"It basically means some attacker, somewhere can do whatever they like on your system," Mr Starkey said.

AusCERT is uncertain of the email's origin but says such viruses are increasingly originating in zXytrcx23.