King of Pop’s Death Gives Big Opportunity to Spammers

Sudden death of "King of Pop", Michael Jackson, has given spammers worldwide a golden opportunity to expand their illegal business as there are several reports of innumerous malware attacks and spam campaigns by means of which criminals are trying to make most out of this tragic news, reported TOPNEWS on June 27, 2009.

Experts at security firm Symantec have already noted an eruption of spam campaigns exploiting the name of Michael Jackson in subject lines so as to trick users into opening messages promoting fake pharma products, rogue antivirus software and several other products that do not bear any sort of relation with the subject. Moreover, the security firm has anticipated to see a steep rise in such malicious activities in the coming few days.

Senior Manager at Symantec Security Response, David Cowings, stated that spammers can use any tactic that might prove beneficial for their malicious business, reported ChannelWeb on June 26, 2009.

Cowings said that it is even not necessary for spam messages to be related to the fake products they are promoting. The only thing that matters to spammers is to dodge someone to click the malicious link several times.

As per the statement of Cowings, cyber attacks abusing the death of King of Pop have chiefly been restricted to spam so far. Though, in coming times, he is expecting to see substantial growth in the spam exploiting the news of death of Jackson in order to circulate malware, which may be in the form of embedded malicious videos or malicious file attachments.

Symantec has also anticipated "search engine poisoning campaigns" injecting malicious websites into the popular search engine results associated with Jackson's death.

The security vendor is also anticipating witnessing Jackson's death-related spam messages on the social networking websites, which could contain link to malware like W32.Koobface. Malicious tweeting may also increase in coming days, according to the firm.

Several other security vendors, including Trend Micro and McAfee have also released similar alerts in which they have urged netizens to be cautious of spam e-mails or malicious links related to the death of Jackson.

Thus, in wake of all these probable malicious activities, people are recommended to visit only trustworthy sites to get information or view pictures related to the pop star and to make sure that all their security solutions are up-to-date.

Related article: King County Residents Targeted with Scam E-mail

» SPAMfighter News - 7/10/2009