A vast increase in potentially dangerous celebrity death spam has encouraged security firm Symantec to caution users not to open morbid post.
Beleaguered celebrities comprise Beyoncé Knowles, Bon Jovi, Brad Pitt, David Beckham and Gwen Stefani, with these newest attacks using a topic line that always contains the words ‘died’ or ‘Fatal Crash’.“Strange stories of celebrities have abruptly erupted in the spam ring, which explain their deaths in plane crashes or car accidents. The purpose of distribute such false news is to spread viruses using HTML or zipped attachments,” the firm wrote in a blog post.
“This is an old trick of using celebrity names to tempt recipients into opening malicious URL or attachments.”The memo usually claims that the celebrity in question has died along with 34 other people in a plane that stopped into the side of a ton on approach to an airport.
Recipients who want more particulars are then urged to open an attachment. This attachment, called “Hot News.zip”, contains an executable file that Symantec has recognized as Trojan.Zbot. “By using product names such as well-known news agencies gives [the spammer] the much-needed credibility in order to gain trust in the recipient’s mind,”
“Users ought to follow normal practices of not breach any doubtful links or attachments conventional in unsolicited email or from an unexpected source.”