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 is senior technology consultant at Sophos. The readers of Computer Weekly voted him security blogger of the year in 2009 and 2010, and he pipped Stephen Fry to the title of "Twitter user of the year" too. Which was nice. He was also named "Best Security Blogger" by the readers of SC Magazine in 2011. You can subscribe to Graham's updates on Facebook, follow him on Twitter and circle him on Google Plus for regular updates.