Bin Laden scam
Internet users seeking new information about the death of Osama bin Laden face being the victims of online phishing scams.
Cyber criminals have been exploiting bin Laden’s death by bombarding curious Internet users with rogue invitations to trap them into viewing ‘unseen’ pictures and videos of his dead body.
These vicious malware attacks are spreading fast around the Internet through attachments on e-mails and links on popular social networking sites such as Facebook and Twitter, according to Carl Leonard, the senior manager at Websense Security Labs.
FBI and global security experts are now warning online users to exercise caution while browsing for news about the death of Osama bin Laden.
Should web surfers click on these links and attachments, hackers can steal code and keyloggers installed on machines to get hold of personal information, like bank account details.
Websense warned that clicking on the fake links can also post malware onto a Facebook profile, ultimately spreading the scam across a user’s Facebook friends once the link is seen by them.
The Twitter account famously belonging to the Pakistan citizen ‘Athar’, who tweeted the raid live without realising Osama bin Laden was involved, has also been compromised by hackers, as they look for new ways to take advantage of busy websites in an attempt to infect massive numbers of computer users.
Speaking with Yahoo! News today, Mr Leonard said the online security firm has been tracking the scams since the news of bin Laden’s death.
He said: “Malware authors know that there is a huge interest in this kind of news and use it as a social engineering trick. Find your information on trusted news websites, don’t let curiosity get to you and use technology to protect you. There are Facebook applications which notify you when a scam is posted on a wall.”
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