Forget Angelina, forget CNN headlines, we want Internet Explorer 7!

by Graham Cluley on August 8, 2008 | Comments Off

Filed Under: Malware, Spam

It's a funny old business, social engineering.

In the past week or so we've seen Britney and Paris having fun together, CNN headlines of Michael Jackson being sued by his pet dog, and not to mention the numerous XXX-rated pictures of Angelina Jolie.

So, what do the bad guys do now?

Well, they're not offering pictures of the hottest new starlet, or even breaking news from the Olympic Games (although that surely isn't too far away..). No, they're urging us to download a program that has been free to download from Microsoft's website since October 2006.

As with earlier attacks, the actual link points to an executable file (detected by Sophos as Troj/FakeAle-EF), and the email was most certainly not sent by Microsoft. You would be very unwise to download and install it. If you want IE7, go to Microsoft's website instead.

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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.