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Security Firms Warn of Spam, Malware Attacks Linked to Gaddafi’s Death
IT News Online Staff
2011-10-24
IT security and data protection firm, Sophos, has warned of a malicious email attack, one of the first to capitalize on the death of Libyan dictator Colonel Muammar Gaddafi.
The scam poses as pictures of Gaddafi’s body, tricking users into believing the email comes from the AFP news agency and has been forwarded by a fellow Internet user. In reality, opening the attached file on a Windows computer puts PCs at risk of malware infection.
A typical message is:
Subject: "Fw: AFP Photo News: Bloody Photos: Libya dictator Moammar Gadhafi’s Death"
Message body:
"Libya dictator Moammar Gadhafi’s Death
Libyan dictator Moammar Gadhafi, the most wanted man in the world, has been killed, the country’s rebel government claimed Oct. 20. The flamboyant tyrant who terrorized his country and much of the world during his 42 years of despotic rule was cornered by insurgents in the town of Sirte, where Gadhafi had been born and a stronghold of his supporters."
"The death of Libyan dictator Colonel Gaddafi has almost inevitably resulted in cybercriminals taking advantage of the news story, and the general public’s seeming interest in viewing ghoulish photos and videos of his last moments," said Graham Cluley, Senior Technology Consultant at Sophos. "As unlikely as the legitimacy of these emails may seem - in this case, the latest photos being forwarded to you in an email attachment - the news is often just too interesting for people to ignore."
"Internet users need to be sensible when it comes to a top news story, and not throw their security suspicions regarding links and unsolicited attachments out the window, in search of the latest revelations or shocking images," added Cluley.
Websense Security Labs said its ThreatSeeker Network has been tracking an ongoing spam campaign relating to reports of Colonel Gaddafi’s death. The company has been monitoring related spam campaigns about Gaddafi for a while now, and the recent news of his death seems to have raised the bar a little with an influx of such spam.
The scams, like many others similar to this, bear the usual traits with a request for the victim to help the assailant, and then further going through the motions of trying to make the message convincing by legitimizing the content with a news article.
Websense said a lot of work was put into the detail of the messages to lure the unsuspecting victim into believing them. The company said this reinforces a point made in the past about the real nature of current spammers, as all forms of current news just become another means of propagating spam.
Amon Sanniez, Websense Security Labs, said, "Whether it’s an actual death or rumors of one, it’s predictable that spammers will jump on the story, but that doesn’t make it any less dangerous. Spam emails are getting cleverer and harder to spot. By using scare tactics, or breaking news stories, many people will be fooled into clicking on links or opening attachments against their better judgment."
"In fact Websense Security Labs found that searching for breaking trends and current news represented a higher risk (22.4%) than searching for objectionable content (21.8%)," added Sanniez.
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