Cybercriminals Use Heath Ledger’s Death to Spread Malware
Trend Micro is reporting that within hours of the news that popular actor Heath Ledger had been found dead in his New York apartment, several malware sites appeared at the top of search listings for the words “heath” and “ledger”. Users visiting these sites are redirected to another site, which prompts them to download an ActiveX “update”. The update is fake and instead begins a series of malware downloads.
Researchers believe this latest malware attack is related to the suspected hacking of a Czech ISP’s servers. This isn’t the first time cyber criminals have used newsworthy events to spread their malware. Last month’s assassination of Pakistan Prime Minister Benazir Bhutto also spawned a flood of malware sites. The criminals have caught on to using events people are likely to do searches on and then use Search Engine Optimization to get their malicious sites at the top of search results.
