Security software company Symantec says that the recent deaths of Ed McMahon, Farrah Fawcett and Michael Jackson have led to a rise in spam using these events to misleadingly draw email users’ attention. The public’s interest and curiosity surrounding the deaths of these celebrities are exploited by spammers to get better click rates on spam messages. Luckily, according to Dave Cowing, Senior Manager at Symantec Security Response, none of the messages have been found to contain malicious code.
Symantec says that public should be cautious of future spamming behaviour that might include:
• Spam with subject lines related to any of these deaths trying to peddle fake medicines.
• Spam with subject lines related to any of these deaths leading to misleading applications, such as fake antivirus software.
• Spam with subject lines related to any of these deaths leading to fake codecs.
• Spam with subject lines related to any of these deaths with malware attached.
• Search engine poisoning campaigns injecting malicious sites into the top search engine results related to any of these deaths.
• Sites claiming to host videos of the last moments of these individuals’ lives, but that actually peddle fake medicines or malware.
• Links to fake videos of these stars that actually attempt to infect users with malware.
• Social networking site messages related to these deaths which could be W32.Koobface.
• Twitter tweets about these deaths leading to all sorts of malicious Web sites.