Fresh Malware Assault Pretends to be Death News of Fidel Castro

According to researchers from Sophos the security company, one fresh malware assault, which camouflages as current hot reports about Fidel Castro the ex-dictator of Cuba as allegedly dead, is presently circulating online.

It maybe recalled that Fidel Castro, who's a politician and revolutionary of Cuba has been both a President and Prime Minister of the country.

Meanwhile, Sophos warns that Internet-users are likely to get a spam mail apparently from the "24 Horas" news site from Chile declaring the hypothetical demise.

Also as per the company, the e-mails bear one header of "Murio Fidel Castro," with a message body asserting that Castro the tyrant who ruled for long on Cuba met his heavenly abode during the day, while in his house. As per officials, he'd been ailing since some days having experienced an unexpected heart attack, the message states.

Thereafter, it (e-mail) tells recipients for following a given web-link to view a latest movie on Fidel Castro's death, Sophos outlines.

Remarking about this latest incident, Senior Technology Consultant Graham Cluley at Sophos states that certainly if Castro had truly died then it'd have made the breaking news on CNN and BBC. However, he hasn't observed those news agencies giving any such reports. So, people should be careful about clicking web-links inside the e-mail since it can result in a Trojan virus on their Windows PCs, which subsequently pulls down more malware. Sophos has identified the Trojan as Troj/DwnLdr-JGW and the malware as Troj/Agent-SYF, Cluley adds. Nakedsecurity.sophos.com published this on August 7, 2011.

Worryingly, it's because of the above kinds of terrible and malevolent assaults that have prompted Sophos to highlight within the 2011 Mid-Year Security Threat Report it recently issued from the company that a mean of 150,000 malicious programs was detected daily during H1-2011. This is equivalent of a distinctive malicious program getting designed every half-second, accounting for a 60% rise from 2010.

Eventually, death rumors like that of Fidel Castro by cyber-criminals over the Internet isn't something new. In two other instances, popular TV and film actor, Charlie Sheen and well-know rapper Kanye West were also targeted with a similar scam.

Related article: Fark.com Files Suit against Suspected Hacker from Fox13

» SPAMfighter News - 8/16/2011