Exposed: CNN Top Ten video malware

Nicolai from the Canadian branch of SophosLabs has blogged about the malicious email campaign we have been seeing in our spamtraps.

The emails look just like CNN’s breaking news alert service, and internet users may be fooled into clicking on the links and being taken to dangerous website rather than the genuine CNN site. Once there, computer users are encouraged to download an executable file to view the video and that, of course, is a Trojan horse.

Customers using Sophos’s email and web gateway solutions are protected against the campaign, and the malware is proactively detected as Mal/EncPk-DA.

Here is a short video I made this morning, exposing the disguise used in these emails and their dangerous payload:

(Enjoy this video? You can check out more on the SophosLabs YouTube channel and subscribe if you like)

I think the sound quality of the commentary on this is better than in the last video we published, but let me know if you have any comments. I probably need to buy a decent microphone – again, let me know if you have a suggestion on what I should purchase.

You can view this and other videos on the SophosLabs YouTube channel. If you haven’t already done so, you might want to subscribe to the channel to be automatically alerted to new videos that we post.

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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, Threads, Bluesky, or drop him an email.