Update on China quake cybercrime

Just minutes after I blogged about 419 scams exploiting the Chinese earthquake, we discovered a spammed malware campaign that is trying to infect people posing as breaking news of the disaster.

Chinese Earthquake Trojan horse

The attack comes in the form of an attached malformed Word document that takes advantage of an exploit to run malicious code.  Read “Fraudsters spam out Trojan Horse as China earthquake news story” to learn more.

It is becoming normal now for the guys in SophosLabs to keep a watch for waves of malware, spam and phishing campaigns in the hours and days after any high profile news story today.  Whether it be a tragic disaster like a natural disaster, a celebrity in the news for all the wrong reasons, or the premiere of the latest Hollywood blockbuster.

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Maybe it’s time we set up a plasma screen in the labs with a rolling 24-hour TV news channel..

Actually that might not be such a daft idea, especially if you remember how the Zotob worm hit the CNN studios live on-air three years ago, disrupting their regular scheduling…

Zotob worm hitting CNN live on-air


Graham Cluley is an award-winning keynote speaker who has given presentations around the world about cybersecurity, hackers, and online privacy. A veteran of the computer security industry since the early 1990s, he wrote the first ever version of Dr Solomon's Anti-Virus Toolkit for Windows, makes regular media appearances, and is the co-host of the popular "The AI Fix" and "Smashing Security" podcasts. Follow him on Bluesky and Mastodon, or drop him an email.

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