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.

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.

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…

Read more in my article on the Naked Security website.

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Graham Cluley •   @gcluley

Graham Cluley is a veteran of the cybersecurity industry, having worked for a number of security companies since the early 1990s when he wrote the first ever version of Dr Solomon's Anti-Virus Toolkit for Windows. Now an independent analyst, he regularly makes media appearances and is an international public speaker on the topic of cybersecurity, hackers, and online privacy. Follow him on Twitter, Mastodon, Bluesky, or drop him an email.