With dozens of Nigerian lottery scammers now off the streets and better-informed Internet citizen perhaps a tad likely to click on phishing emails , disaster relief solicitations and credit card ripoffs , the ever-inventive spammer-hacker community has pioneered a new approach to online grifting: fake news alerts. Maybe you've seen recent e-mails claiming to be from MSNBC and CNN with sensational headlines like " Elizabeth Taylor Found Murdered at Home " and "Mary-Kate Olsen guilty for Heath Ledger's Death" (see above") -- and even the alarming, "Europeans dislike Americans attitudes [sic]." Graham Cluey, a security specialist at Sophos , made a video about a new trend of CNN News Alerts like "Michael Jackson is sued by his own dog"--that lure users to a rogue site that will attempt to infect their computers with malicious software posing as a video plug-in. In my own e-mail account today, I counted 42 fake news e-mails--though Gmail is apparently catching on, as it refused to give me the option to click on the nasty links. At his security blog, Gary Warner has a list of the titillating headlines the phony CNN spammers are using -- some which refer to actual stories -- like the "real" 95-year-old Batman from Texas -- and others that don't, such as "`Dark Knight' - download it instantly fo free [sic]." One more reason never to believe anything you read. ...
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With dozens of Nigerian lottery scammers now off the streets and better-informed Internet citizen perhaps a tad likely to click on phishing emails , disaster relief solicitations and credit card ripoffs , the ever-inventive spammer-hacker community has pioneered a new approach to online grifting: fake news alerts. Maybe you've seen recent e-mails claiming to be from MSNBC and CNN with sensational headlines like " Elizabeth Taylor Found Murdered at Home " and "Mary-Kate Olsen guilty for Heath Ledger's Death" (see above") -- and even the alarming, "Europeans dislike Americans attitudes [sic]." Graham Cluey, a security specialist at Sophos , made a video about a new trend of CNN News Alerts like "Michael Jackson is sued by his own dog"--that lure users to a rogue site that will attempt to infect their computers with malicious software posing as a video plug-in. In my own e-mail account today, I counted 42 fake news e-mails--though Gmail is apparently catching on, as it refused to give me the option to click on the nasty links. At his security blog, Gary Warner has a list of the titillating headlines the phony CNN spammers are using -- some which refer to actual stories -- like the "real" 95-year-old Batman from Texas -- and others that don't, such as "`Dark Knight' - download it instantly fo free [sic]." One more reason never to believe anything you read. ...