UK General Election-Themed Spam and Malware Exploiting People’s Interests

As per the warning issued on April 21, 2010 by Sunbelt Software, a Windows security software provider, users need to be aware of a noticeable rise in spam and malware activity associated with the upcoming UK General Election (on May 6, 2010).

Considering the exceptional use of online tools like e-mail, social networking, blogs, mobile applications, and viral videos by the political parties, the forthcoming elections has been dubbed as "Digital Election".

However, the high-scale online campaigning of elections has also contributed to the growth of unsolicited messaging and malware that falsely claims to have arrived from the participating political parties, or asserts to contain information, websites, news and marketing material like viral video campaigns related to election.

Furthermore, as the country is occupied with enormous e-mail marketing campaigns, cyber goons have well assessed the situation and have recently begun distributing spam messages laden with malicious software that claim to be sent by the campaigns of the candidates.

Experts explained dangers associated with this particular scam campaign and said that generally AV software manufacturers suggest to avoid opening e-mails that come from unknown sources. However, seeing the importance of the upcoming event, it becomes necessary for users to open the e-mails allegedly sent by authentic campaign e-mail IDs.

As always, with any major news event round the corner, users can expect to receive spam e-mail which will appear as appeals from candidate or party. Actually, these messages include links directing users to malicious websites, which download malware and rogue security solutions

People interested in election news must update their antivirus software. To ensure authenticity of a website, URLs must be carefully inspected before clicking through them.

Tom Kelchner, threat research manager at Sunbelt Software, said that users must exercise extreme caution for the coming weeks, as spammers and malware distributors seek to capitalize on the people's interest in election to distribute malware, links to infected websites and unnecessary e-mail marketing spam, as per the news published by Sunbelt Software on April 21, 2010.

Most preferred method for cyber criminals is exploiting the latest events to distribute spam and malware. Before elections, cyber felons have tapped various other events including Super Bowl and February's Winter Olympics to spread malicious software. However, the upcoming FIFA Men's World Cup scheduled to commence in June (2010) is anticipated to cause most widespread cyber attacks.

Related article: US Passes Baton to Asia in Spam Relay

» SPAMfighter News - 5/5/2010