Massive Spam Campaign Spreads False CNN News Items With Fake Flash Player Malware

Known social engineering tactic involving Adobe Flash Player is exploited in currently active malware campaign. Spammed user is encouraged to click on a site with a fake news item in order to install a fake Flash player update (file names might be flashupdate.exe, get_flash_update.exe, watchmovie.mpg.exe). If user clicks “Cancel” in the dialog that prompts for an update, another pop-up appears, that tells the victim that they have to download it to view the video. Clicking “Cancel” there returns the user to the first dialog. It puts the user in perpetual loop, so the only options are to kill the browser session or install the malware. Last night this campaign sent over 80 million messages for the past 24 hours, with 5 million sent on an hourly basis, according to MX Logic.

This campaign is using Fake CNN News Update spam, with subjects like “CNN.com Daily Top 10″. This new CNN tactic is likely to be more successful than the single-line spam tactic that we had been seeing over the past several weeks as this message looks like it could be an news update email sent by CNN. This new message also attempts to trick the user into believing that they signed up to receive it because of their email preference settings at the CNN web site. If you see this message come into your inbox, delete it immediately.

Another round of malware spam has been launched, this time featuring MSNBC instead of CNN:

Subject: MSNBC Breaking News

Title: msnbc.com - BREAKING NEWS: <some bogus news here>

If you see this message in your inbox, delete it immediately.


read full article here


http://cyberinsecure.com/massive-spam-campaign-spreads-false-cnn-news-items-with-fake-flash-player-malware/

I delete them and put the addy in my blocked list. They just send them with another addy.

I know I don't subscribe to CNN, so they were ruled to the toilet.

So I'll get MSRNC spam at work, this will be ruled into the toilet as well.

Hawkeye-X

"McCain demonstrates expertise in foreign affairs"
"Obama too presumptuous?"
"What the Bush administration did right"
...
Good thing I never clicked on it.

hubby said if clicked that is what it would do

told me microsoft appreciates my privacy and if i want to stop this click....

them from MSNBC, as well.

I clicked on the MSNBC one, which said there was a link to unsuscribe, but I couldn't find it, so I keep getting them. there was a looping effect, too, with that one, til I was able to finally close the link.

install each one, update them, and run them to keep your system clean as a whistle.

1. Super Antispyware http://www.superantispyware.com/

2. A2 http://www.emsisoft.com/en/software/free/

3. Emco anti-malware (this one is good) http://www.emco.is/products/malware-destroyer/features.php

but the one MSNBC thing

it didnt' screw up my box, did it?

thanks for the freeware. will it interfere w/Norton? I'm pretty happy with that at this point. don't want to slow things down......

took some effort to clean it out.


Thanks for the alert!

XoftSpySE Anti-Spyware We use it at work, better than ALL the rest but not free.

http://www.paretologic.com/products/xoftspyse/index.aspx

I'll take a look at that!