Hackers Exploit Virginia Tech Massacre!

Even before, people had started recovering from the terrible Virginia Tech massacre; spammers and cyber-terrorists had already rushed headlong to exploit the disaster at the University to corrupt computers using malware, security professionals asserted on April 19, 2007. The spams claim to show camera phone recording of the University shootouts, reported Techshout in April 20, 2007 edition.

Malware authors are very unscruplous. So, there's nothing unexpected about the latest bit of malware let loose on the Internet, taking undue credit of the Virginia Tech killings. However, it's very disturbing that somebody succeeded in creating a thematically apt virus so fast.

The latest malware is implanted in an e-mail message that leads viewers to a Brazilian Web site asserting to contain the camera-phone footage of the massacre. People wanting to visit that website land up transferring a malware that tries to rob user ID and access code, as per news released on April 20, 2007 by Chronicle.

Opening up the link launches malicious software containing a screensaver file named TERROR_EM_VIRGINIA.SCR, which places a banking Trojan with spyware on Windows operated computers. The Trojan then begins thieving online banking identification of innocent users.

Following tragedies and crises, fake sites claiming to gather charity money are likely to materialize. To date, over 450 dubious domain names associated with the Virginia Tech massacre have been listed, communicated Johannes Ulrich, chief technical officer at Internet Storm Center (a division of the SANS Institute), which supervises the security of the Web.

An Engineering graduate from Medak in Andhra Pradesh, in fact created on Orkut an identical profile of dead Minal Panchal, a Mumbaikar student of Architecture at Virginia Tech University who was a casualty of the killings. The guy not only produced a false profile of the murdered girl on Orkut, but also proceeded to message her pal about her being alive.

After that, the friend was swamped with telephone calls and messages asking whether Minal was actually alive, till it became very apparent that it was a ghastly joke. The false profile was directly taken off Orkut...as reported in April 22, 2007 edition of Techtree.

Related article: Hackers Redirect Windows Live Search to Malicious Sites

» SPAMfighter News - 4/30/2007