Jackson Suicide Spam Spreads Malware
News travels fast but it's best to kill the messanger.
Monday, June 13, 2005
BY : Brian Ashe
Once again celebrity is being used to try to spread a malicious program across PCs loaded with Windows. Unlike make manufacturers and retailers, these are not endorsed by the person in the story. This time the widely publicized Micheal Jackson case is getting its turn to be used for this dubious act.
The message comes in with a subject of "Re: Suicidal attempt" and the body contains text of "Last night, while in his Neverland Ranch, Michael Jackson has made a suicidal attempt". This all leads to a link to a website. Upon arrival at the site the page will return a message that will make the visitor believe that it is overloaded and can not process the page view. However, in the background the website is secretly installing a Trojan backdoor on the computer.
The site installs the Borobt-Gen Trojan, using known vulnerabilities in Windows based PCs. This issue does not affect Linux and Mac users.
It is not the first time that Jackson has been the subject in an attempt to infect computers with malware. In October of 2004 claims of an incriminating home video were used to lure the unsuspecting into installing another Trojan variant.
As always, make sure that your system is up to date and that your anti-virus is running and has the most recent signature updates.
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