Emails offering naked pictures of the actress Angelina Jolie are responsible for a surge in malware attachments last month, according to security firm Sophos.

The rise in malware attachments was attributed to a hacking campaign to spam out the Pushdo Trojan, which accounted for nearly four in every five malicious emails sent during a single 24-hour period last month, the security firm said.

The attack infects computers and turn them into ‘bots’, which hackers can then control and use for tasks such as generating more spam email without the computer owner’s knowledge.

Sophos senior security consultant, Carole Theriault, told Computer World that “The trick of tempting users with scantily clad pictures of hot-looking girls is as old as the hills – but people still fall for it.”

“The Pushdo Trojan has been spammed out every Wednesday since March 2007 using a variety of enticing disguises, but cyber criminals [are now spamming] any time and day of the week.”

Sophos data also revealed that one in every 833 emails was carrying malicious attachments in September, compared to August with 1 in every 1,000 emails.

The surge, apparently, indicates that hackers were still predominantly using emails as a vector for attack.

The security firm also detected an average of 5,400 new Web pages hosting malicious code each day last month.

Sophos told BSC that in September, China remains as the country hosting the highest number of websites with malware at 54.9%. It was followed by US and Russia, with 17.1% and 14.4%, respectively.

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Entry was posted on Monday, October 1st, 2007 at 11:36 pm under Adult content, Security.

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