Cyber Crooks Exploiting News of Air France Flight 447 Crash for Illegal Gains

The crash of Air France Flight 447 on June 1, 2009 in the Atlantic Ocean is still the most talked about news at present, but cyber criminals are trying to capitalize on it to propagate their malicious codes, said security researchers at Trend Micro.

Security experts also said cyber criminals are exploiting people's curiosity to know more about the mishap on search engines. Criminals are utilizing the Search Engine Optimization (SEO) poisoning to get their malicious links relating to the story rank high on search engines. When a curious surfer clicks on any one of these links, he is directed to various websites that eventually install fake antivirus software on his computer.

Trend Micro researchers have named the rogue antivirus TROJ_FAKEAV.BIM and revealed that it links to a URL that installs another malevolent file. This malevolent file is identified as TROJ_YEKTEL.AA.

It has been found that when TROJ_YEKTEL.AA (also known as Packed.Generic.187, Generic Downloader.z and TrojanDownloader:Win32/Yektel.A) is executed on the system, it encourages the potential victim to install an essential antivirus application called Personal Antivirus.

With the finishing of the installation process, the victim's computer screen is covered with a message regarding the detection of a bunch of malicious codes.

However, Trend Micro security experts have warned victims that these malicious codes detections are fake. Cyber criminals' main intention is to scare people so that they purchase full version of the software.

Security experts have condemned crooks behind this scam for making money by using the tragedy in which hundreds of people have lost their lives and so much of mourning is involved.

Citing the above incident, security experts have explained that the gravity and importance of a news event spur the possibilities that cyber criminals exploit it to conduct malicious activities.

Hence, computer users need to be extra careful and take necessary precautions if they don't want to infect their systems with bogus antivirus and malware in some cases, said security experts. It should be remembered that news events, either bad or good, not only draw attention of people but also attract cyber criminals who as opportunists manipulate these incidents to extract maximum out of them.

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» SPAMfighter News - 6/12/2009