Dan Warne20 January 2009, 12:30 PM
A raft of new malware has been released to cash in on Barack Obama's inauguration as President tomorrow.
With Barack Obama poised to take office as the President of the United States, virus writers are hard at work releasing viruses and malware that cashes in on the hype around the inauguration.
Symantec tipped APC to spam emails being blasted out, with contents along the lines of:
Subject: You must look at this!
Our new president has gone
Yours truly,
Dan Harrison
---
Subject: Breaking news
Barack Obama refused to be the president of the United States of America
Yours Sincerely,
Cecily Lynn
---
Subject: Breaking news
There is no president in the USA anymore
With kind regards,
Edgar Rouse
---
Subject: What is going on with our country?
Obama has gone
Yours faithfully,
Rodney Lynch
Each email contains a link that goes to the following website:
Symantec notes that while the page looks strikingly similar to the official Obama-Biden campaign site, it is actually far different.
"The site first attempts to exploit weaknesses in your web browser to surreptitiously install malicious software onto your machine. Although, even if your machine is fully patched, the site hopes that your curiosity gets the better of you and each hyperlink on the site points to malicious content. The files you can download from the site take on a variety of names such as usa.exe, obamanew.exe, pdf.exe, statement.exe, barackblog.exe, barackspeech.exe.
"Don’t let the myriad of names fool you; under the hood, the files are all otherwise identical.
Symantec says the malicious software is called W32.waledac, which is capable, among other things, of:
- harvesting sensitive information on your computer
- turning your machine into a spam-sending zombie
- establishing a back-door on your computer that will allow it to be remotely accessed
According to Symantec, political themes play an especially prominent role in today’s online attacks because of their strong appeal among a wide audience.