The Spam Cryer

United States Presidential Election Email Attack

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November 6th, 2008

Spammers continue to take advantage of anything ‘newsworthy’ or ’sensational’ like the recent US Presidential election

A recent surge of spam messages appear to be coming from a seemingly legitimate source and contain a message indicating that additional video news coverage of the election is available by following a link. This website will instruct the user to update to a new version of Adobe Flash Player in order to view the video ‘news’.

This update is not a legitimate Adobe Flash Player update; it is malicious code. If the user downloads this executable file, malicious code will be installed on your system and your banking information or worse is in the hands of the hackers.

Just another of the same but this time playing on the interest everyone worldwide has in this event.

Protect yourself!

1. Keep your protection - anti-virus and anti-malware both – up to date.
2. Patch your PC (windows update) and applications (secunia.org) on a regular basis.
3. Don’t click on a link in an e-mail unless you know it is safe.
4. Don’t update software from a third party site – go to the source (i.e. adobe.com for flash) – if the vendor says you have the latest version and another site says you need an update who are you going to trust?

- The Spam Cryer

Entry Filed under: Botnets, Online Scams