Spammers & Malware Purveyors Spread Johnny Depp’s Death Rumor

Malware distributors and spammers have recently targeted Johnny Depp - the film actor from Hollywood. About Depp, it is said that he is the sexiest person living on the earth.

A cyber miscreants' gang targeted the actor by sending out fake e-mails during the fourth weekend of January 2010. The e-mails stated that the actor along with his wife 'Vanessa Parados' in France had died due to a fatal motorcar crash in Bordeaux.

The electronic mails as well as search engines results containing web-links led users to the apparently CNN news website. However, the actual CNN site did not post the report but the links led users to a copycat website reflecting the URL - Angelfire.com.

Nevertheless, people who frequently visit to the CNN website can immediately spot the difference because its design is extremely old. Moreover, the incident date is given as March 25, 2004. One more thing that indicates the e-mails' hoax nature is the wrongly spelled phrases and words like alcohol. All of these are enough to make netizens realize that the Depp story is clearly a fake.

Security researchers emphasize that Depp was popularly used on Twitter - the micro-blogging website. Consequently, the gossip news about him spread further.

Commenting on the most recent online fake story, Graham Cluley, Security Expert and Senior Technology Consultant at Sophos, said that developers of malicious software were currently abusing the searches for information regarding the story in a bid to contaminate people's PCs, as reported by Webuser on January 25, 2010.

The abused searches lead to links that apparently offer films of Depp's accident, but in reality encourage users to download and plant an 'ActiveX codec' on their PCs. This codec is nothing but a Trojan virus to infect computers. This instance represents only one among the numerous, which have emerged and examined.

According to reports, Depp isn't the only celebrity to be a target of cyber miscreants. Famous figures like George Clooney, Zach Braff, actor Jeff Goldblum and 'Twilight' author Stephanie Meyer too were struck maliciously with death rumors across the Internet during 2009.

» SPAMfighter News - 01-02-2010

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