By now, many of you will be aware of the tragic passing today of performer Michael Jackson and actress Farah Fawcett overnight. Our sympathies go to their families, friends and fans who will miss them dearly.
A sad aspect of this situation is that there will now be an inevitable wave of internet scams and spam by unscrupulous hackers and criminals seeking to capitalize on the public’s interest in these events. Recent experience has taught us that internet scammers love to exploit events and topics with strong public interest. Scammers have proven to be inventive and quick to exploit these situations. Already we have seen criminals using Farah Fawcett’s name as part of malicious search engine manipulation to redirect Internet users to sites hosting malware.
Michael Jackson lived an extraordinary life, often generating controversial news headlines that captured the public’s attention; predictably through their outrageousness (I remember hearing reports many years ago that Michael Jackson lived in a hyperbaric chamber). Hackers and spammers play on the outrageous. They have learned that unbelievable or incredible headlines are what draw internet users into clicking on links without thinking and here lies the potential problem.
Spammers and hackers will be quick to jump on the interest around these events. Expect to see some of the following activities:
- Spam messages with outrageous headlines relating to Michael Jackson, URL links or attachments encouraging you to open to view a video or read a report. Expect to see topics such as ‘Mr. Jackson being frozen for future re-animation’ or ‘Jackson still alive, it was all a publicity stunt’.
- If you receive messages such as this, do not open the attachment or click on the link. Go directly to a trusted or reputable news agency for your information.
- Be very cautious using search engines such as Google to find information about Farah Fawcett or Michael Jackson. Look carefully at where links in search results point to.
- Update your browser to the latest version. Many of these malicious search link results will probably point at sites using browser vulnerabilities to automatically trigger and infect you. There is a dramatically reduced chance of this happening if you are running the latest browser versions.
- Be wary of Twitter, Facebook, MySpace updates and the like, mentioning Jackson or Fawcett. Hackers are increasingly using social networking sites and user contribution (Web 2.0) sites for malicious purposes.
- These messages may come from people you know but you should not automatically trust them. Hackers rely on you assuming that the message is safe because of who it comes from. Resist the temptation to click on these links. Do your own investigation or go directly to your friend’s social networking page to see what they are saying rather than following the link you were sent.
- Blogs will be another popular tool for scammers. Expect to see links pointing to blog sites with wording directly related to the death of Michael Jackson or Farah Fawcett. Criminals use free blogging services to help promote links to their malicious web sites and improve search engine rankings when they are trying to manipulate their ranking on search results for a given topic. Be particularly wary of links on these topics that point to free blog hosting service websites.
