Malicious spam attacks are trying to exploit Barack Obama's US
presidential win,
accounting for about 60% of malicious spam, says security firm
Sophos.
A widespread
malicious spam campaign claims to offer news of Obama's
successful campaign, but it instead links to a website that
attempts to infect users with a Trojan horse that steals
information for identity fraud.
The emails, which have subject lines such as "Obama win
preferred in world poll", and which claim to come from
news@president.com, have accounted for approximately 60% of all
malicious spam seen by SophosLabs in the past 24 hours.
The spam messages contain a link that takes internet users to a
webpage which instructs visitors to download "Adobe Flash 9" to
view a video of the first African-American president making an
"amazing speech".
However, the download will infect computers with a malicious
Trojan horse detected by Sophos as Mal/Behav-027.
"Barack Obama is undoubtedly the most famous person on the
planet right now", said Graham Cluley, senior technology consultant
at Sophos. "But email users who are eager to get the latest scoop
on Obama's monumental presidential win should be careful that they
are not being tricked by conniving cybercriminals."