Security News Feed Wednesday 11/05/08

Websense® Security LabsT ThreatSeekerT Network has discovered further activity from malware authors using the news of the U.S. Presidential campaign outcome as bait to attract users into executing malicious executables. So far we have over 25,000 emails through our systems that use the technique described below. In a very quick response to the outcome of the U.S. Presidential attacks we have now seen both localized and globalized attacks.



The email offers news of Barack Obama's speech, recorded the day after the election results were published. Clicking on the link leads the user to a purposely registered domain which advises the user that they need to install the latest version of Adobe Flash player before the video can be viewed. The malicious Web site actually links to a file called 'adobe_flash.exe'

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Malware Piggybacks on Obama Win
http://voices.washingtonpost.com/securityfix/2008/11/malware_piggybacks_on_obama_wi.html

Cyber criminals are blasting out massive amounts of spam touting a video of President-elect Barack Obama's victory speech. Recipients who click the included link are taken to a site that prompts visitors to install an Adobe Flash Player update. The bogus update, however, is actually a data-stealing Trojan horse.

The messages, with such subject lines as "election results winner," and "the new president's cabinet?", and "fear of a black president," direct recipients to a site featuring a picture of Obama beneath an official U.S. government seal and the domain name america.gov (the real domain names used to host these fraudulent sites appear to differ from message to message). Beside Obama's visage is an embedded video player that reads "loading player." A few seconds after the site loads, the visitor is prompted to download the malware, disguised as "adobe_flash9.exe".

http://www.microsoft.com/security/portal/sir.aspx
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