Scammers have unleashed a wave of new spam emails, disrupted search results, and specially crafted websites related to Laden's death to mislead people
Scammers have unleashed a wave of new spam emails, disrupted search results, and specially crafted websites related to Laden's death to mislead people
Osama bin Laden may have died but he continues to terrorise people in the virtual world. Cyber criminals have been quick to capitalise on the news of Laden's death.
The news may have appeared first on Twitter before the official confirmation, but surfers following up offers of 'live kill footage' from Facebook or email will almost certainly end up hitting malware.
Following his killing, these scammers have unleashed a wave of new spam emails, disrupted search results, and specially crafted websites to mislead people.
On Google, searches related to Laden direct users to links where they are offered malicious software, said Chester Wisniewski, a security advisor from Sophos. The bad links falsely alert users that their computer may be infected and that they should download virus-scanning software, which is often a virus itself.
One Facebook posting appearing to be from the BBC, trumpeted a link titled 'Osama bin Laden Killed (Live Video)'. When clicked, the link takes the user to an outside page modelled to look like Facebook, where it asks the user to enter a verification code. When the user submits the code, the link is then posted to the user's Facebook account.
Researchers at Kaspersky Lab began detecting spam e-mail campaigns and search engine optimised web pages offering news and images of the slain bin Laden within hours of the first reports of his death in a fire-fight with US forces in Abbottabad, Pakistan.
End point security firm Symantec's probes are receiving multiple malicious spam samples in Portuguese, French and Spanish languages. The links in these spam dumps downloader on the victim's machine which in turn download the actual malware. Further analysis by Symantec has shown that these attacks most of the malicious attacks have originated from Brazil, Europe and the US, said Abhijit Limaye, Director, Development, Symantec.
Cashing in
Security experts warning to Netizens that online scammers may seek to exploit the death of Al-Qaeda leader Osama bin Laden to spread malware has come true. According to security firm Websense, the website of Sohaib Athar (@ReallyVirtual), the man who unknowingly gave live ring-side view of the bin Laden's death on microblogging site Twitter, has been hacked. Websense has discovered that the website belonging to Athar has been compromised by hackers and leads to the Blackhole exploit kit. This means Web surfers who visited Athar's blog, Reallyvirtual.com, early on Monday may have malware silently installed on their computers.
According Websense, "Anyone going to this page would also load content from the malicious URL ..., and the Blackhole Exploit Kit would then try to use several exploits to automatically install malware on the PC."
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