New attempts to infect your PC

Continuing the trend of using fake news stories to trick people into visiting sites that contain malicious code (which I have mentioned before in my blog), fake news stories claiming to be from news web site MSNBC have recently been turning up in people’s inboxes (including mine).
 
These ‘news’ alerts contain such intriguing headlines as ‘BREAKING NEWS: Mary-Kate Olsen responsible for Heath Ledger’s death’ and ‘BREAKING NEWS: McDonald’s found to breach FDA regulations, suspended from trading’. These headlines are designed to pique the reader’s interest and encourage them to click on the link included in the email for further information.

When they reached my inbox my suspicions were raised immediately: for a start they were sent by my email provider straight to my Junk Email box. However, most damningly, I have never signed up for or requested MSNBC emails – and I know MSNBC are a respectable organisation that don’t send unsolicited mail. If I’m not expecting an email, and I don’t recognise the sender, then I will never open it. To verify the ‘news’ stories I simply went directly to a trusted news web site (such as www.bbc.co.uk/news) to see if they were being reported there – and of course they weren’t.
 
Unfortunately the combination of attention-grabbing headlines and the appearance of emails coming from a reputable source means that many people may fall victim to the fraud. Graham Cluley, senior technology consultant for internet security firm Sophos, explains the dangers of these emails:
 
‘The malware on the webpage pointed to in the emails downloads further malicious code from the internet… presently it downloads rogue anti-virus software that tries to scare users into buying a bogus product… If you do so, of course, you will be handing over your credit card details to people who have already proven they are prepared to break the law.’