First trace of Halloween-themed malware
By Joe Elvin
07/10/2011
The first traces of Halloween-themed malware have been spotted on the internet.
Although the annual holiday is more than three weeks away, cyber-criminals are already beginning to plant malicious links amongst web searches for Halloween-themed keywords.
A report on websense.com has warned users about a malicious fake video website which is being linked to web searches for 'halloween skeleton templates' thanks to some devious black-hat SEO tactics.
The website appears to present videos of nude celebrities but asks users to upgrade their Flash player in order to make the videos work. These 'upgrades' are in fact malicious software which can damage computer networks.
Although it is far from unusual for hackers to exploit national holidays this way, they appear to be preparing their Halloween pranks much earlier than in previous years. These clever use of social engineering highlights the importance of investing in high-quality IT management systems.
Reacting to the find, IT security journalist Lucian Constantin told internet users to be wary of any Halloween-based links which transport to an irrelevant website.
Writing for theinquirer.net, he explained that, although Google had done a lot to prevent the poisoning of their results pages, these instances were still common.
Cyber-criminals also like to theme social networking spam and rogue downloads around public holidays as well, he warned.
