Michael Jackson death leads to increase in spam

Last week saw the deaths of iconic American stars Michael Jackson and Farrah Fawcett, and as a result spamming levels have increased dramatically according to Symantec.

Symantec expects to see additional spam circulating the web as attackers seek to take further advantage of these tragedies. Some of the online tactics anticipated are:

• Spam with subject lines related to any of these deaths trying to peddle fake medicines
• Spam with subject lines related to any of these deaths leading to misleading applications, such as fake antivirus software
• Search engine poisoning campaigns injecting malicious sites into the top search engine results related to any of these deaths
• Sites claiming to host videos of the last moments of these individuals’ lives, but actually peddling fake goods or malware
• Links to fake videos of these stars that actually attempt to infect users with malware
• Social networking site messages related to these deaths that could link to malware such as W32.Koobface
• Twitter tweets about these deaths with links to all sorts of malicious Web sites

Symantec advises anyone looking for news, videos, pictures or any information regarding these individuals and their lives, to only visit sites that are trustworthy, and to ensure all personal security solutions are up-to-date.

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