Waledac spammers fake ‘bomb blast’ news story
Malware authors use geolocation technology to make the attack more convincing and persuade users to click on malicious links.
Security vendors have warned about a new social engineering attack that delivers fake news stories linking to malware.
The new attack tries to persuade users to watch a maliciously crafted fake Reuters video of a bomb attack' by downloading a version of Flash player, which is in reality malware.
The Waledac trojan had previously targeted users through Valentine's spam in February.
However, this attack appears to be particularly clever, as the malicious websites have been engineered using geolocation technology to report the location of the incident to correspond with the user's IP address. "Don't be fooled by the location. The site is running a couple of clever scripts," said Rik Ferguson of Trend Micro on the company's security blog.
"One of them will detect the location of your IP address and vary the location of the disaster accordingly. The other will vary the name of the downloaded file (news.exe, save.exe, run.exe etc.)"
He said it was further evidence that botnet authors were actively filling the void left behind by the fall of the Storm botnet and the McColo server takedown.
Security vendors Sophos and Websense also reported the attacks.
Sign up today and you will receive a free copy of our Future Focus 2025 report - the leading guidance on AI, cybersecurity and other IT challenges as per 700+ senior executives
-
HPE's new Cray system is a pocket powerhouseNews Hewlett Packard Enterprise (HPE) had unveiled new HPC storage, liquid cooling, and supercomputing offerings ahead of SC25
-
High performance and long battery life: How Dell AI PCs offer the best of both worldsUnlocking the true potential of on-device AI requires a perfect balance between software and hardware
-
Ransomware victims are getting better at haggling with hackersNews While nearly half of companies paid a ransom to get their data back last year, victims are taking an increasingly hard line with hackers to strike fair deals.
-
96% of SMBs are missing critical cybersecurity skills – here's whyNews The skills shortage hits SMBs worse as they often suffer from a lack of budget and resources
-
Sophos Firewall Virtual review: Affordable network protection for those that like it virtualizedReviews Extreme network security that's cheaper than a hardware appliance and just as easy to deploy
-
MSPs are struggling with cyber security skills shortagesNews A shortage of tools and difficulties keeping pace with solutions were also ranked as key issues for MSPs
-
Nearly 70 software vendors sign up to CISA’s cyber resilience programNews Major software manufacturers pledge to a voluntary framework aimed at boosting cyber resilience of customers across the US
-
Sophos and Tenable team up to launch new managed risk serviceNews The new fully managed service aims to help organizations manage and protect external attack surfaces
-
Ransomware groups are using media coverage to coerce victims into payingNews Threat actors are starting to see the benefits of a more sophisticated media strategy for extracting ransoms
-
Shrinking cyber attack “dwell times” highlight growing war of attrition with threat actorsNews While teams are becoming more proficient at detecting threats, attackers are augmenting their strategies