Shivani Mody/NN
Bangalore, May 6: There are some folks who are seeking to benefit from the swine flu. Cyber criminals are using the flu fear as a bait to attack internet users. Spam mentioning swine flu in its subject line has touched about billion messages each day.
India currently ranks 5th in generating spam with the ‘Swine flu' word. These messages originate from compromised computers networked in a criminal botnet. "Brazil ranks No. 1, followed by the US, Germany and Russia," said Prabhat Singh, senior director for APAC in McAfee Avert Labs.
"Hackers are using social engineering techniques for better results. They send mails with words `Swine flu' in the subject line. Embedded URLs in these mails entice users to follow links for more information. The users then unknowingly download malicious code onto the computer," said Singh.
In one case, a Russia-based site instructs the visitor to install a video codec to view a movie. The movie isn't real and installs malicious code onto the victims computer to convert it into a botnet.
There has also been an increase in the registration of domain names that mention swine flu, which could indicate a rise in malicious sites that take advantage of the scare.
"Our clients are reporting about malware attacks from PDF files under the name of swine flu FAQs. Samples are extremely limited but this appears to be yet another attempt by hackers exploiting current and developing situations," said Shantanu Ghosh, VP (product operations), Symantec India.
A malicious Adobe PDF document named `Swine influenza frequently asked questions.pdf' has been analysed by the Symantec security response team. "When users attempt to access the file, malware is dropped onto the local computer. This can then be used to obtain personal information about the user," added Ghosh.
The malicious PDF file is presently known as Bloodhound.Exploit.6, said Ghosh.
"A topical situation increases the success rate for hackers. But users can prevent any harm by accessing reputable sites for information and not follow unknown links," said Singh.
Some of the commonly used subject lines for spam mail is ‘Swine flu in USA', ‘Salma Hayek caught swine flu', ‘Madonna caught swine flu', ‘Swine flu in Hollywood', ‘NY victims of swine flu' and ‘Swine flu worldwide'. These kinds of attacks were earlier seen during the conficker worm scare on April 1 and election campaigns online.
There has been 80 billion to 170 billion email messages each day over the last month. Of this 78% to 90% is spam. "Currently 5% of the spam volume globally mentions swine flu to trick people into opening the email message," said Singh.