Air France crash prompts spam, malware outbreak

As expected, spammers and malware writers are trying to cash in on the Air France disaster.

Spammers have begun falsely promising news on the Air France crash as a way of tricking recipients into opening messages promoting Canadian pharmacy products.

Junk mailers this week began pushing a new campaign that included subject headings such as "Last seconds of plane" or "A-330 blackbox record" as a means of enticing users into opening the emails. If they did, users were met with messages pushing discounted drugs, such as Viagra and Tamiflu.

"As usual, these spammers are disrespectful and do not hesitate to use the most shocking events to promote their shady businesses," Francois Paget, a McAfee senior virus research engineer, wrote Thursday on the Avert Labs blog.

Not all of the emails using Air France as a hook are as benign. Websense researchers said Thursday that they have detected a Portuguese spam campaign claiming to include links to videos from the crash site, but the links actually lead to a trojan downloader.

Air France Flight 447 crashed on May 31 en route from Rio de Janeiro to Paris, killing all 228 people on board, making it the worst air disaster since 2001.

See original article on scmagazineus.com

Copyright © SC Magazine, US edition

What are your thoughts on this article? Add your comment below.

To begin commenting right away, you can log in below or register an account if you don't yet have one. Please read our guidelines on commenting. Offending posts will be removed and your access may be suspended. Abusive or obscene language will not be tolerated. The comments below do not necessarily reflect the views or opinions of SC Magazine, Haymarket Media or its employees.

NOTE: You must be a registered member of SC Magazine to post a comment.

Click here to login | Click here to register
comments powered by Disqus
Sign up to receive SC Magazine email newsletters
   FOLLOW US...
Most Read