PUNE: US president-elect Barack Obama, who was swept into the White House on a wave of popularity, has turned out to be even more popular with s
pammers and virus attackers.
Cybercriminals are seeking to capitalise on the results of the closely-watched historic election with mass malicious email campaigns. Web, data and email security solutions provider Websense, which claims to be the first to discover the malicious activity, said that such emails carry information-stealing malware.
Websense regional director of SAARC and India Surendra Singh said, “The activity began from multiple locations immediately after the Obama’s acceptance speech as a huge number of people were waiting to hear him. The email contained a link to a malicious website, purported to contain a video of Obama’s speech. It then downloaded a rootkit into the user’s computer and sent the vital data to multiple command and control servers.”
What this means is that the data goes into cyberspace and the hackers can remotely control your computer. This is particularly critical if e-banking transactions have been carried out, since this data is now available to the hacker. Attackers used the names of well known publications like Time magazine and La República (Peru) in the email subject line to encourage users to click on the links. They used several variations of malicious lures mainly containing videos.
Singh said that attackers had hacked into a well known travel site and used it to host an information-stealing Trojan Horse downloader file called ‘BarackObama.exe’. This file executed and unpacked phishing kits locally. Phishing sites are those that appear to be legitimate, encouraging the user to share personal data.
A spokesperson of Symantec, the software data security major, said that a presidential gift card spam was also prevalent, where recipients were asked to complete a survey on the election with the promise of receiving a free gift card, from which spammers harvested personal information.
Source : *infotech.indiatimes.com/News/Internet/Beware_of_Obama_virus_in_inbox/articleshow/3684165.cms
pammers and virus attackers.
Cybercriminals are seeking to capitalise on the results of the closely-watched historic election with mass malicious email campaigns. Web, data and email security solutions provider Websense, which claims to be the first to discover the malicious activity, said that such emails carry information-stealing malware.
Websense regional director of SAARC and India Surendra Singh said, “The activity began from multiple locations immediately after the Obama’s acceptance speech as a huge number of people were waiting to hear him. The email contained a link to a malicious website, purported to contain a video of Obama’s speech. It then downloaded a rootkit into the user’s computer and sent the vital data to multiple command and control servers.”
What this means is that the data goes into cyberspace and the hackers can remotely control your computer. This is particularly critical if e-banking transactions have been carried out, since this data is now available to the hacker. Attackers used the names of well known publications like Time magazine and La República (Peru) in the email subject line to encourage users to click on the links. They used several variations of malicious lures mainly containing videos.
Singh said that attackers had hacked into a well known travel site and used it to host an information-stealing Trojan Horse downloader file called ‘BarackObama.exe’. This file executed and unpacked phishing kits locally. Phishing sites are those that appear to be legitimate, encouraging the user to share personal data.
A spokesperson of Symantec, the software data security major, said that a presidential gift card spam was also prevalent, where recipients were asked to complete a survey on the election with the promise of receiving a free gift card, from which spammers harvested personal information.
Source : *infotech.indiatimes.com/News/Internet/Beware_of_Obama_virus_in_inbox/articleshow/3684165.cms
