Since the death of pop superstar legend Michael Jackson, apart from the media attention there has been a lot of cyber crime exploiting the singer’s death. This has taken a new twist since the recent headlines regarding potential foul play. An abhorrent number of viruses and phishing sites have now been created to take advantage of mass public interest in the singer’s death.

For example, the forensics team at the University of Alabama, Birmingham (UAB) yesterday reported spam which uses a messaging attack vector such as the one in the picture below.

According to one of the researchers (Gary Warner of UAB) blog, when a user clicks on this link, they will be taken to a website which would immediately infect their computer with malware that looks for credit card information. In addition, the malware would also scan for Google search links on your computer and when ever you used those links would display a set of “Google” results that would take you to further infected sites.

Organisations are advised to re-emphasise to their users the importance of not replying or clicking on anything from SPAM related messages whether at work or at home.

References

UAB Press Release on the Michael Jackson Virus
Gary Warner and Michael Tanner’s research on the infection