David Marcus
Director, Security Research
Dave Marcus currently serves as Director of Security Research for McAfee® Labs, focusing on bringing McAfee’s ...
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I suppose this was inevitable. The reported death of Osama Bin Laden is just too good a lure for cybercriminals and scammers to pass up. We at McAfee Labs certainly anticipated this and have been tracking it since the first reports came out of Washington early this morning.
We have seen variations of what I can only call “expected lures”:
Beware of any verbiage, subject lines in emails, or links via Facebook or Twitter that contain words like these–as they will almost certainly get you into trouble. Make sure your security software is fully updated and be sure to use safe browsing software as well.
Stay safe out there and we will keep you posted!
——- UPDATE ———–
Shortly after I posted this blog some of the other researchers at McAfee Labs forwarded me some additional data (shoutouts to Craig, Eric, and The-Funny-Hatted-One!).
Here is an example of what one of the currently circulating spams looks like:
Should anyone make the mistake of clicking the link I circled, they are then directed to a site that downloads a small file onto their system that attempts to install itself. This file, detected currently as either “Heuristic.LooksLike.Win32.EPO.F” or “Artemis!7C4314D9690D” is in actuality a Trojan that steals data. More detailed detection information can be found here.
McAfee Labs has also seen links and scams that lead to FakeAV, RBot, and ZBot binaries, so be careful!
——– Yet Another Update!! ———–
Caught a few more scams today that I thought I would share with you all out in Intertubz-land! The have been more than a few bogus “Bin Laden Death” video scams circulating today and they lead to the expected places…. FakeAV and spam. Below is a screenshot of a bogus page I cam across that asks the viewer to copy and paste a script into their browser in order to see a video of Osama Bin Laden’s death:
It certainly DOES NOT lead to the promised video because there is no released video! What it does do is spam your wall with messages trying to get people to do the same thing. Do not be fooled. Do not copy and paste, this or indeed any script asking you to do so in order to see ANY video.
I also ran across more than a few bogus shortened links that lead to FakeAV websites:
One thing I did find humorous was the message bar showing the scan progress, which I have circled on the following picture:
None of those “scanned directories” actually exist on my machine. Come on – C:WINDOWS\system32?????? I am on a MacBook. Try harder n00bs.
Lastly we ran across a Word document entitled “Laden’s Death” that looks to contain an exploit of CVE-2010-3333. It crashed immediately when opened but managed to make 430 changes to the PC I was analyzing it on. Lots of changes to startup items, location settings and such:
I uploaded the whole RegShot diff file to PasteBin. Should you like to view it, just go here. I’ll continue to update this post as more stuff comes in. Stay updated. Stay informed. Stay safe.
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Tags: counter identity theft, Cybercrime, Data Protection, global threat intelligence, identity protection, identity theft, malware, social networking, spam
Hello David,
Can you please send me alerts – I can post them on twitter & FB links to post alerts… I am working with many youth /women globally I would like to see if I/we can help in creating social networking awareness. I have many people who follow my work. I am an evanglist & tech activist bringing awareness for end user security Best Ashie @mymulticast
Hi Ashie – I encourage you to follow Dave Marcus on Twitter (@DaveMarcus ) or subscribe to many of the McAfee blog feeds. It sounds like you may find the Consumer Feeds particularly useful, but check out the McAfee Labs blog feed and all of the others, as well.
Social networking is becoming a number one threat, it becoming a place for dangerous people lurking SOME OF US are fighting to protect innocent children /youth/women as end users – and educating them via my profile & sites to take precaution. I have been alerting youth in developing countries to be careful of any links that they should not click. I work within the end user ICT sector I believe we need to have now teach NGOs & IO working with children to adopt a policy for developing countries otherwise we will experience many dangers on social networking sites…@mymulticast
People in USA have seen more terrorized image of people falling from 89th floor of WTC live. I don’t think that this evil pig’s face is much worse than that….
The Government can show the picture of both the twin tower falling aside with this piece of s**t’s photo (side by side). This will reduce the impact on the viewer….
hey can i see the video of him holding the newspaper anyway
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