Posted by Virus Bulletin on Mar 11, 2011
Miscreants releasing scams, phishing, scareware... within a matter of hours.
As most of the world reels in shock at the devastation caused by this morning's massive earthquake in Japan, it comes as little surprise that cybercriminals are already making the most of the news story the rest of the concerned population wants to learn about.
As is often - if not always - the case when big news stories break, the spammers, scammers and malware distributors did not waste their time in hijacking the story and poisoning search results relating to the story.
Already, Trend Micro is warning of the search term 'Most Recent Earthquake In Japan' leading to Fake AV variants, while Sophos's Graham Cluley has reported seeing a tsunami-related Facebook survey scam. More reports will, no doubt, appear thick and fast.
The advice, as always, is to exercise extreme caution when using search engine results - use Google's 'news' filter if possible, which applies a vetting process to the search results - and treat all emails and Facebook posts (containing links) with suspicion. If possible, go directly to recognised news agency sites and only make donations to legitimate charity websites.
Posted on 11 March 2011 by Virus Bulletin
