Commentary

George Hulme
 

Malware Attack Riding Coattails Of Obama Win

Antivirus software maker Sophos today discovered attackers have launched a Web campaign of their own that aims to exploit the senator's presidential victory. And it's rather nasty.

Antivirus software maker Sophos today discovered attackers have launched a Web campaign of their own that aims to exploit the senator's presidential victory. And it's rather nasty.According to Sophos, this malware may have reached as much as 80% of all of the malicious spam that flowed through Sophos Labs today.

According to the company, targeted users first get a spam e-mail proclaiming the Obama win, and it asks users to visit a bogus election results Web site. Users are then asked to download what looks to be a movie to watch Obama's "amazing speech." Instead of a video of Obama's speech in Chicago last night, visitors are instead infected with a Trojan horse/backdoor which can be remotely controlled by the attacker.


More Security Insights

White Papers

More >>

Reports

More >>

Webcasts

More >>

In an e-mail to InformationWeek, a Sophos spokesperson also noted that the malware:

• Contains rootkit technology to conceal itself • Is designed to steal information from an infected computer • Also has general "backdoor" functionality • Spies on user's keyboard and mouse inputs and can take screenshots • Looks for passwords

It submits the information it needs to a Web server located in Kiev, Ukraine.

Sophos has more information here, on its research blog.


Related Reading




Currently we allow the following HTML tags in comments:

Single tags

These tags can be used alone and don't need an ending tag.

<br> Defines a single line break

<hr> Defines a horizontal line

Matching tags

These require an ending tag - e.g. <i>italic text</i>

<a> Defines an anchor

<b> Defines bold text

<big> Defines big text

<blockquote> Defines a long quotation

<caption> Defines a table caption

<cite> Defines a citation

<code> Defines computer code text

<em> Defines emphasized text

<fieldset> Defines a border around elements in a form

<h1> This is heading 1

<h2> This is heading 2

<h3> This is heading 3

<h4> This is heading 4

<h5> This is heading 5

<h6> This is heading 6

<i> Defines italic text

<p> Defines a paragraph

<pre> Defines preformatted text

<q> Defines a short quotation

<samp> Defines sample computer code text

<small> Defines small text

<span> Defines a section in a document

<s> Defines strikethrough text

<strike> Defines strikethrough text

<strong> Defines strong text

<sub> Defines subscripted text

<sup> Defines superscripted text

<u> Defines underlined text

InformationWeek encourages readers to engage in spirited, healthy debate, including taking us to task. However, InformationWeek moderates all comments posted to our site, and reserves the right to modify or remove any content that it determines to be derogatory, offensive, inflammatory, vulgar, irrelevant/off-topic, racist or obvious marketing/SPAM. InformationWeek further reserves the right to disable the profile of any commenter participating in said activities.

Disqus Tips To upload an avatar photo, first complete your Disqus profile. | View the list of supported HTML tags you can use to style comments. | Please read our commenting policy.
T-Shirt Giveaway T-Shirt Giveaway: Each week we're selecting one great comment from our readers. The author of the comment will receive an InformaitonWeek Community t-shirt. So get posting!
Subscribe to RSS

Resource Links