Update on China quake cybercrime

Filed Under: Malware, Spam

Just minutes after I blogged about 419 scams exploiting the Chinese earthquake, we discovered a spammed malware campaign that is trying to infect people posing as breaking news of the disaster.

Chinese Earthquake Trojan horse

The attack comes in the form of an attached malformed Word document that takes advantage of an exploit to run malicious code.  Read "Fraudsters spam out Trojan Horse as China earthquake news story" to learn more.

It is becoming normal now for the guys in SophosLabs to keep a watch for waves of malware, spam and phishing campaigns in the hours and days after any high profile news story today.  Whether it be a tragic disaster like a natural disaster, a celebrity in the news for all the wrong reasons, or the premiere of the latest Hollywood blockbuster.

Maybe it's time we set up a plasma screen in the labs with a rolling 24-hour TV news channel..

Actually that might not be such a daft idea, especially if you remember how the Zotob worm hit the CNN studios live on-air three years ago, disrupting their regular scheduling...

Zotob worm hitting CNN live on-air

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About the author

Graham Cluley has worked in the computer security industry for more than 20 years, developing anti-virus software and doing quite a lot of talking about internet threats. He's won awards for his blogging, but is proudest of the text adventure games he wrote when he was still wearing short trousers. You can learn more about those (the games, not the trousers) at grahamcluley.com. Send Graham an email, subscribe to his updates on Facebook, follow him on Twitter and App.net, and circle him on Google Plus for regular updates.