Hackers use Michael Jackson to leverage virus and spam attack

Prior to the official announcement that Michael Jackson was dead, there was a flurry of rumors going across the Web causing much confusion. Many sites were reporting that Michael Jackson was in a state of deep coma while others were reporting of his passing. It has been found that devious hackers have taken advantage of this confusion by leveraging virus and spam attacks disguised as Michael Jackson information.

Dave talked about the effects of Michael Jackson’s passing on the Internet not that long ago. However, it seems like there are some other after effects occurring across the Web in the form of virus and spam attacks.

According to PC World, less than 24 hours after Michael Jackson’s death, several spam and malware attacks have been made. The attacks all attempted to take advantage of the information shortage by fraudulently offering details of Michael Jackson’s death. There are emails being sent out asking users to reply back for “secret” details of Jackson’s death.

Analysts indicate that this is spammer’s attempt at collecting and validating live email addresses in order to sell the list to the highest bidder for spamming. Another attack came in the form of a Trojan virus, which would infect a user’s computer upon accessing a video that is said to reveal photos and videos of Jackson’s passing.

Other attacks came in the form of fraudulent blogs which would actually execute various scripts in the background upon entering. Some of these blogs generated over 100 URLs in the background while others downloaded a virus to the computer.

It really is despicable that people around the world are using Michael Jackson’s death to leverage these attacks, which seem mainly for personal gain. Most of these attacks can easily be avoided by discarding emails sent from unknown users as well as being cautious of going to suspicious looking sites with embedded videos. Ultimately, the best preventative measure is to make sure to have some sort of firewall protection equipped with a virus scanner.

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