Cyber-crooks using Osama’s death to steal user data
04 May 2011
Cyber criminals are circulating spam emails and links claiming to have videos of Al-Qaida leader Osama Bin Laden's death or rejecting the same to steal user data, antivirus company McAfee has said.
Emails with subject lines like 'See video in which Osama bin Laden is shown holding a newspaper with today's date' and pictures-of-osama-dead.exe, lure users to a fake website that downloads a Trojan on to their machines, the antivirus company has said.
Links claiming ''exclusive footage'' about the world's most wanted terrorist in his last moments are also doing rounds on Facebook.
These false links are said to have been leaked from organisations like the Wikileaks and CNN.
Once clicked, the link automatically gets pasted on the walls of the user's Facebook contacts.
McAfee said that the downloaded file has been detected as either ''Heuristic.LooksLike.Win32.EPO.F'' or ''Artemis!7C4314D9690D'', which is a Trojan that steals data.