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Crooks Target Inboxes With CNN Gaza News
Jason Lee Miller
Staff Writer
2009-01-11
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Cybercrooks' latest attempt at your bank account comes in the form of CNN.com look-alike emails leading to CNN look-alike webpages offering graphic videos from Gaza via a fake Adobe Flash player.
 | | Crooks Target Inboxes With CNN Gaza News |  |
RSA tracked the emails to China last night and claimed to have shut it down, but it was still raging this morning, according to other reports. Dubbed "Cease-Fire Trojan Attack, RSA identified the Trojan as a social engineering exploit executed via silent drive-by download that tries to install an SSL stealer to capture financial and personal information.
"The scam is yet another example of how adept fraudsters are in engineering attacks with near real-time response to breaking news," wrote the RSA FraudAction Research Lab.
"It also underscores the opportunistic nature of fraud purveyors who increasingly prey upon public interest and/or concern regarding national or global events of broad importance (such as the recent global economic crisis or the U.S. presidential election)."
This morning, AppRiver had tracked over 100,000 attempts in a matter of hours as fraudsters tried to trick people grabbing early morning news.
""As a point of comparison, when the infamous Storm Worm was in its prime in 2007, it would send single email blasts comparable in volume to this CNN.com attack," said Fred Touchette, senior security analyst at AppRiver.
"The CNN.com scam carries even more potential for damage than the Storm Worm because it uses a more intelligent social engineering tactic - a pop-up prompting you to install an updated Adobe Flash Player version - rather than the tactic used most of the time by the Storm Worm - a malicious email attachment."
About the Author:
Jason is a graduate of the University of Kentucky. He covers business, technology, and security issues.
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