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"These guys have picked up on all the fears people have," Yaneza said. (Google) |
SAN FRANCISCO — With fears of the deadly Swine flu rambling millions of people worldwide, cyber crooks are capitalizing on the panic with torrents of email promising "swine flu" news but delivering malware or dubious offers.
"These guys have picked up on all the fears people have," Jamz Yaneza, Trend Micro threats research manager, told Agnece France Presse (AFP) on Thursday, April 30.
"The thing making it worse is the misinformation out there about swine flu."
Following its outbreak in Mexico late April, scammers launched websites hawking bogus products claiming vaccines and prevention of the deadly virus, but delivering malware or dubious offers for potency drugs.
Subject boxes of spam email feature lines such as "Swine Flu Outbreak!" and "Madonna Catches Swine Flu!" in order to grab people's interest, a tactic referred to by hackers as "social engineering."
"With all the hysteria of swine flu, some people click on these emails," said Yaneza.
Mexico, the epicenter of the flu outbreak, confirmed Friday that 15 people died of the flu and 328 others were infected.
Denmark and South Korea also confirmed their first Swine flu cases.
The World Health Organization warned late Wednesday that a global Swine flu pandemic was imminent.
The new flu strain, a mixture of various swine, bird and human viruses, poses the biggest risk of a large-scale pandemic since avian flu surfaced in 1997.
A 1968 "Hong Kong" flu pandemic killed about 1 million people globally.
"Zombie" Tools
Computer security firms warned that crime groups involved with Conficker, Storm and other computer viruses are most likely behind the flu spam.
"You may have noticed that pirates have been replaced by swine flu as the disaster of the moment on television stations," David Perry, Trend Micro global director of education, said.
"It was all but inevitable that the bad guys would pick up on this."
Security firms suggested that "zombie" computers infected with a dreaded Conficker virus that scourged this year were among tools used to send flu spam.
"Swine virus has become a computer virus that takes advantage of fear, confusion and the interest for information available on the Web regarding the epidemic to spread mischievous codes, junk e-mails and infect computer equipment," said Juan Pablo Castro, Trend Micro director for Latin America.
The US Food and Drug Administration on Thursday warned punitive measures against websites posting promotion of fraudulent anti-flu products.
But anti-virus companies believe that the surge of the Swine flu ads spam is "short-lived".
"Malware writers, spammers and scammers are low lives," David Marcus of McAfee wrote in a blog posting at the computer security firm's website.
"They will use any high media event or high impact news story to push their wares including the sickness and misery of others. Stay vigilant and stay safe."
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