Malicious spam lures victims with claims of celebrity deaths

Symantec is currently tracking an eruption on the spam ring of stories about celebrities dying in plane crashes or car accidents. The intention behind distributing this false news is to spread viruses using HTML or zipped attachments. This is one more in a series of recent virus attacks seen in the last few weeks. It is an old trick to use celebrity names to lure recipients into opening malicious URL or attachments.

The full Symantec blog post can be accessed here: http://www.symantec.com/connect/blogs/malicious-spam-luring-victims-claims-celebrity-deaths

This tactic seems to have on-going success as attackers continue use it as a ploy to lure victims into opening malicious files.

In one of the campaigns, spammers are using subject lines indicating that a celebrity has died. In the message, it adds that the celebrity has died along with 34 other people when their plane carrying the group on a trip crashed into a mountainside while approaching the airport. For further details, recipients are asked to open the malicious attachment.

Subject lines include:

Beyonce Knowles died

Bon Jovi died

Brad Pitt died

Cameron Diaz died

David Beckham died

Gwen Stefani died

Jay-Z died

Jennifer Aniston died

Jennifer Lopez died

Johnny Depp died

Justin Timberlake died

Kanye West died

Miley Cyrus died

Nicole Kidman died

Ronaldinho died

Tiger Woods died

Tom Cruise died

Spammers are known to create curiosity in their spam messages so that users get interested and make an attempt to open and, perhaps, install malicious attachments. Also, brand names such as a well known news agency celebrity names gives spammers the much required credibility to gain trust in the recipient’s mind. Users should follow standard practices of not opening any suspicious links/ attachments received in an unsolicited mail or from an unexpected source.

Please let me know if you would like to speak with a Symantec spokesperson about this in further detail.

Media Contact:

Jasmin Athwal

Max Australia

+61 2 9954 3492

jasmin.athwal@maxaustralia.com.au