Topic: Virus exploits Hurricane Katrina disaster

[Clive]

Web User
September 1, 2005
Quentin Reade

Virus writers are already taking advantage of the Hurricane Katrina disaster to spread malware.

The spam campaign poses as a breaking news report and tries to trick innocent computer users into visiting a website which then tries to infect their PCs.

Subject lines used in the emails include:

Re: g8 Tropical storm flooded New Orleans.
Re: g7 80 percent of our city underwater.
Re: q1 Katrina killed as many as 80 people.

Experts at SophosLabs, the virus, spyware and spam analysis centres, believe that the people behind the email attack are deliberately adding random characters into the subject lines in an attempt to avoid detection by anti-spam filters.

The body of the emails vary, but all relate to the disaster that hit New Orleans and elsewhere across the southern American states.

SophosLabs' Graham Cluley said: "The hurricane is a dreadful natural disaster, and it's sickening to think that hackers are prepared to exploit the horrendous situation in an attempt to break into computers for the purposes of spamming, extortion and theft.

"Everyone should ensure they have defences in place to properly protect against the very latest malware attacks."