Spyware, viruses, & security : Swine flu spam clogs inboxes

Malicious Code Authors Jump on the Swine Flu Bandwagon

by Marianna Schmudlach  - 4/29/09 11:05 AM

In reply to: Swine flu spam clogs inboxes by Marianna Schmudlach 

04-29-2009

Kevin Haley writes...

Computer viruses got their name because they spread just like biological viruses. There are other parallels as well; for instance, best practices. In the medical world they are called preventative measures, but really they are best practices. For instance, you should wash your hands in soap and water often. In the computer world, the equivalent is keeping your security software up to date and keeping your patches current. For computer users, if you follow this one best practice, your computer will stay healthy.

We wrote earlier about how the spammers are taking advantage of public concern about the swine flu. Now the malware writers have entered the game, too. Potential victims are going to get an email with a PDF attachment that promises to answer all questions about the much talked about swine flu. The attachment is named “Swine influenza frequently asked questions.pdf.” It is a real PDF file, and when opened it will show something like this:

more: https://forums2.symantec.com/t5/blogs/blogarticlepage/blog-id/malicious_code/article-id/268