Random Hacks at The Daily Mail News Website

According to one Windows security software firm 'Sunbelt Software,' the website of the British newspaper "The Daily Mail" unwittingly displayed a web-link that lead to a site infected with malware promised a video clip of the World Cup match in which Germany played against England on June 27, 2010.

The web-link that emerges over the movie, tells readers how to hack a Facebook account. But it really diverts them to a bogus survey site that poses as providing them with hacking software. In reality, the software contains malware and extort personal information for ID theft along with compromising their accounts of social-networking sites and e-mail.

Christopher Boyd, Senior Threat Researcher at Sunbelt Software, stated that the survey was one of those in which users participated in nonsense in exchange of something which perhaps didn't deserve the time and effort they spent for it, as reported by Infosecurity on June 29, 2010.

While telling the user to relax and fill in certain questionnaire for 'Unlocking' a given 'Download,' the website also provides multiple quick surveys to choose from.

Moreover, examining the web-link, one will find that it points to one blogspot spamblog, which apparently gained advantage due to clicks from The Daily Mail's readers. The spamblog visitors didn't find anything in it except the so-called directions helping to do the hack that led to a download URL.

On June 28, 2010, Boyd said that there were 200 hits on Spamblog after which the newspaper removed the link. Additionally, he said that there were 17,000 hits in all on Spamblog since the time of the link's posting. Spamblog had also experienced an increase in traffic of 50% since the 4th week of June 2010, as reported by TechEYE on June 28, 2010.

According to the researcher, when The Daily Mail covered the Germany Vs England match, it apparently snatched the first YouTube video it found and unluckily for the paper, the film was the same one, in discussion.

Nonetheless, Boyd stated the movie was no longer there within just 9-hrs that was extraordinarily quick for a video from YouTube.

» SPAMfighter News - 7/7/2010