With recent celebrity deaths, spammers are shifting strategies in hopes of cashing in on the misfortunes of others. Although several celebrities have passed away in the last few weeks, pop star Michael Jackson’s death is driving the greatest spam volume. Less than eight hours after Jackson’s untimely death, Sophos began to intercept spam campaigns using the singer’s name. Sophos also discovered cybercriminals taking advantage of 1970s TV icon Farrah Fawcett’s death to spread fake antivirus software. Mass Mailing Worms Since then, Sophos reports large volumes of more spam, malware and other scams. For example, Sophos reports a mass-mailing worm that spams out messages with subject lines such as “Remembering Michael Jackson” with an attached file called “Michael songs and pictures.zip.” The e-mail, which claims to come from sarah@michaeljackson.com, says the attached ZIP file contains secret songs and photos of Michael Jackson. However, the reality is that opening the attachment exposes recipients to infection — and if a computer is victimized,

it spreads the worm to other Internet users. Attackers have also set up a bogus Italian YouTube site link in an e-mail. When users click on the e-mail they get an error message indicating a Flash player upgrade is required in order to view the video. The download link ushers the victim to a fake codec that downloads a Trojan. Exploiting Human Misery How does the rash of celebrity deaths compare with other major world events? It’s not at all unusual for the bad guys to try and take advantage of big international news stories in their attempts to infect computers and steal money, according to Graham Cluley, a senior security consultant at Sophos. Cluley points to hackers in the past taking advantage of the death of the pope, the incarceration of Saddam Hussein, the death of kung-fu actor David Carradine, a Concorde crash in Paris,…

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Celebrity Deaths Drive Spam, with Jackson Pervasive