Websense: Opportunist Hackers Taking Advantage of Deadly ‘Swine Flu’

Security researchers at Websense state that Swine flu spam is circulating like a virus of its own and has lately become more malicious.

The security company has been studying this new trend which emerged in the last week of April 2009. The amount of e-mail with subject lines connected to 'Swine Flu' is in the tens of thousands.

The security experts have further added that it is a successful campaign for hackers and the amount of Swine flu spam is expanding with each passing day.

Manager of Security Research at Websense, Stephan Chenette, says that spammers are well connected with each other, which is evident from their way of working. It (campaign) always goes through the test period, as reported by itWorldCanada on April 30, 2009.

Chenette also disclosed that the attackers check the campaign with less intimidating approaches, exchange feedback with each other, find out what works and what does not and then launch progressively more malicious attacks.

Moreover, spam mails on the afternoon of April 28, 2009 were just spam campaigns which did not include harmful malware or links, just advertisement for pharmaceuticals. Nevertheless, it was cautioned that the latest categories of spam would carry links to harmful sites.

Websense further says that one more tendency is that web domains with names 'Swine Flu' were registered, which can be used for malicious activities such as spamming. Besides, hackers are trying to advertise PDFs carrying generic details regarding Swine flu for $20-$30.

In addition, it was not only Websense, Symantec also declared on its malware security blog on April 29, 2009, that a document named "Swine influenza frequently asked questions.pdf" was circulating on the web. This PDF comes as a mail attachment and is used to install malware on systems.

Analyzing the condition produced by hackers, Chenette says that spam linked with medicine-Medspam- is always something that hackers have used for generating money. The fact that there is flu-kind symptom enables spammers to advertise their story in a realistic manner and providing monetary benefits to them.

Related article: Websense Discovered Malicious Social Networking Spam Campaign

» SPAMfighter News - 5/7/2009