From Miley Cyrus to Jay-Z, and many entertainers in between, a recent spate of spam emails is looking to capitalize on the interest of news junkies. The problem, Symantec notes, is that these are an all-too-familiar hoax that should be ignored at all costs.
Writing in the Symantec security blog, Mayur Kulkarni warns about the recent influx of spam emails the company has seen that seek to lure information-hungry readers into downloading malicious zip files. The setup includes subject lines with brief messages about the recent car- or plane-related death of a certain celebrity.
Instead of information about the demise of some famous celebrity, Kulkarni said what the reader will find is a malicious executable, which turns out to be the infamous Zbot trojan – an absconder of personal and banking information.
The ruse attempts to capitalize on what spammers see as a celebrity-obsessed culture, Infosecurity notes, a tactic that appears to be successful enough to warrant repeated attempts.
“Spammers are known to create curiosity with their spam messages so that users become interested and make an attempt to open and perhaps even install the executable”, said Kulkarni. “Using brand names such as well-known news agencies or using a celebrity's name gives the spammers much needed credibility in order to gain the recipients' trust.”
Kulkarni’s advice, although it may appear to be just common sense these days: don’t open any links or attachments from an unsolicited or unfamiliar source.