Another good reason to read my blogg instead of SPAM...

The U.S. presidential elections came out as not only an opportunity for Americans to express their choice, but also as an opportunity for hackers to spread some Trojans. According to a report by SophosLabs, after the victory of Democrat Barack Obama, the next day officially became not Obama Day, but Malware Day.

Malware authors began sending spam to Internet users all over the world, inviting them to click on a link to either see the election results news page, or watch a video of Barack Obama’s win. But instead of that, the link prompted users to install a so-called update of their Adobe Flash Player in order to watch the video. Sophos identified the file as a piece of malware called Mal/Behav-027, and said it would continue to monitor the activity of the cybercriminals behind the attack.

In addition to that, Sophos reported yet another attack, also evolving around information about Barack Obama, namely a rogue website that was being returned in the sponsored links of a search engine’s results when users searched for any information about Obama. Users who clicked on the link were also prompted to download a file, which was supposedly “100% checked by Antivirus.” The result would have ultimately been the launch of a PDF file that contained an exploit in Adobe Acrobat Reader. Fortunately, the malicious website no longer appears in the search results.

Following the malware spam attack mentioned earlier, Sophos found another suspect file – BarackOb.exe – just another method for cybercriminals of exploiting people’s interest in the United State’s president elect Barack Obama. According to Sophos, almost 60 percent of the spam reported on the day after the elections was Obama related.

“The hackers are taking advantage of Obama-mania,” explained Graham Cluley, senior technology consultant for SophosLabs. Obama is now the most famous person in the world, he said, and people’s interest in him goes beyond all boundaries. It’s a global phenomenon that cybercriminals stood in line to exploit.

Another security research report, this time released by Websense, also talked about the infamous Trojan that was supposedly downloading an update for Adobe Flash Player, but also about an increased activity in registering domains to host malware and fake sites. As Dan Hubbard, vice president of Websense told Computerworld, the hackers are very coordinated. He also said there’s evidence that they’ve planned all this, and waited for the election results to start the attacks.

While it still remains hard to assess how many computers have been infected by now, the number is expected to be a significant one. Users are advised, as always, not to click on suspicious links or download suspicious applications, and always keep their security software up-to-date, in order to prevent their computers from being infected or their personal data from being stolen.

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