The tragic assassination of the former Pakistani Prime Minister Benazir Bhutto has prompted malware authors to jump into action. Security experts are reporting a number of incidents where hackers have tried to con the curious into downloading a video of the assassination which delivers malware instead, according to the security experts McAfee Avert Labs Blog.
McAfee quickly located 10 sites hosted on Blogger.com, Google Inc.'s blog service, that were spreading the fake codec (see picture below).
The sites use the well-worn tactic of promising a video -- in this case one of Bhutto's assassination -- but telling Windows users that they need to install a new high-definition video codec, the program that decodes the digital data stream, to view the clip. Naturally, the so-called codec is no such thing, but is instead rigged code that downloads a variant of the Zlob Trojan horse, a back door that can infect the compromised PC with a wide range of other malware.
"Even death isn't sacred to some," said Symantec researcher Vikram Thakur in a post to the company's security response blog.
Pakistan's former PM Benazir Bhutto was assassinated Thursday after addressing a large gathering of her supporters. John Moore, a photographer for Getty Images, said Bhutto was standing through the sunroof of her vehicle, waving to supporters, when two gunshots rang out. The attacker then blew himself up, killing and injuring a number of civilians. Head to cnn.com for more info and real video regarding the incident.--------------
technorati tags: hackers, Bhutto assassination, Benazir Bhutto, fake codec, trojan
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