Experts Warn: Cybercriminals Exploit News of Train Crash in Spain with their Malicious Campaigns

Security experts warn that cybercriminals are exploiting news of deadly train derailment which happened at Santiago de Compostela, Galicia in Spain on 24th July, 2013, in their spam email campaigns, reported gmanetwork.com on July 27, 2013.

Spain is currently mourning the worst ever train derailment in the country which killed more than 80 people and more than 100 passengers are seriously injured who are being treated in hospitals.

Security firm Dynamoo detected email spam with a link claiming to be a news story from CNN. Internauts who click on the URL contained in the email are taken to a compromised website maligned with malware to taint the unwanted web surfer's computer with malware.

The ruse is extremely crude. Much more sophisticated online scams that rely on influencing search engine results, probably referencing CCTV (Closed Circuit Television) coverage of the ill-fated inter-city train getting off the railway tracks are probable to follow.

According to security experts of security firm Bitdefender, spam campaign mostly originates in US and Latin America. Bitdefender's anti-spam experts also identified samples generated by Iranian, Indian and Polish IPs besides Brazil, Chile and Peru. Cybercriminals are also likely to employ a botnet that runs tainted computers in several countries.

Commenting on the latest attacks, Graham Cluley, an Independent Security Blogger blogged: "Whoever is behind this campaign clearly has no feelings towards relatives and loved ones of people who were killed or seriously injured in the accident," as accords to news published by grahamcluley.com on July 25, 2013.

CNN representatives have disassociated from the latest attacks that are exploiting its (referring to CNN) name and credibility.Hotforsecurity.com published news on 26th July, 2013 quoting a statement of CNN representative saying "Malware emails like these are sadly widespread online and the practice of using trusted brand names is common. Fortunately, most Internet users are aware of these tricks and don't click on links from unfamiliar sources but even then we take the issue of our user's security very seriously. Our security team is currently investigating these latest emails and will do everything to combat attempts to use our brand in this way.

» SPAMfighter News - 8/3/2013