following the death of Osama Bin Laden, cybercriminals started to exploit the news to spread their evil online!
According to Computerworld, scammers and malware makers are using social networking website such as Facebook to infect their victims. Cybercriminals are using both simple and sophisticated tactics to gain profit. For example:
– Fraudulent Advertising on Facebook
– Phishing emails with Bin Laden photos
– Fake video codec with malware (to play Osama killing video)
– Trojan and Fake antivirus software
One of the interested tactics is using Google image search to spread malware. This tactic depends on the SEO (Search Engine Optimization) Techniques. If you search for Osama Bin Laden’s images, photos, killing, body etc, you will get lots of images from Google. Most of these images lead to malicious websites or domains to download fake Antivirus! Other images are crafted with malware.
Using Social Networks such as Facebook to spread scams and malicious code is the most dangerous and effective one due to many reasons:
– Millions of members in one place
– Speed of propagation
– Short URL service that makes it easy to spread malware
Other attackers used Twitter to gain some money by redirecting traffic from Short URLs to their websites. They used Osama Bin laden’s hot topic to spread special malware that propagates crafted short URLs using victim’s account.
FBI issued special warning for computer users to pay attention to any emails, scams, or advertising related to Osama bin Laden.
Bad guys are always faster than you might think. They are exploiting the news for their own privileges!
The situation is not different in the Middle East. But people are driven by religious ideas.
Simple facebook page with Bin Laden’s name in Arabic could get hundreds of LIKES per minute. Due to lack of security awareness in the Middle East, that will open new door for spammers, scams, and cybercriminals.
Hundreds of pages with Bin Laden’s name were created. But most of them deleted by Facebook when getting lots of members!!!