Twilight Movie Online Scam Spreads Malware

According to security experts at PC Tools, malware writers have become more curious and anticipate the release of 'Twilight Saga: Eclipse' - the third installment of the popular Twilight series to fulfill their nefarious objectives. The schedule release date of movie is June 30, 2010.

The security company has highlighted that cybercriminals are exploiting the movie schedule to launch Search Engine Optimization (SEO) attacks.

The security company has also revealed that fans and enthusiast of Twilight are searching for news about the Twilight movie on the web. Cyber criminals want to exploit the situation by putting malicious search results.

If a Twilight fan/enthusiast clicks on the search result, he will be directed to a fake antivirus website that displays a fake pop-up. The pop-up informs him that his computer has been infected by a malware. Moreover, the pop-up looks like a genuine Windows security alert and encourages the user to download a genuine antivirus program, but in reality, the program is fake.

The users tricked by the scam end up losing their credit card details to the cyber criminals who run the malicious scam.

Unfortunately, this is the second time in a month (June 2010) when PC Tools has released the warning to protect the fans of Twilight from cyber criminals involve in malicious activities.

In the first week of June 2010, the security company had released a warning before the actual release of Stephenie Meyer's The Short Second Life of Bree Tanner. The book's digital version in the form of a PDF file was scheduled to release on June 7, 2010. The security company had warned that the book would be available on the Internet in the form of a PDF file compromised to embed malicious JavaScript code created to infect computers with malware.

Other security experts have stated that the threat of malicious e-book files rose with the rising popularity of reader tablets and other devices used to read digital titles.

Owing to malicious nature of the scam, PC Tool has urged Internet users (especially Twilight fans) to be extremely careful when access any website showing details about the new Twilight movie. The warning has come in wake of making computer users prudent to deal with the indecent online miscreants.

Related article: Telstra Alerts About Bigpond phishing E-Mail

» SPAMfighter News - 6/29/2010