August 7, 2008
You probably receive them all the time: spam messages with news headlines. Hopefully, you delete them without even opening them. If not, you could be exposing yourself to nasty viruses.
Throughout the month of July, spam messages using fake news headlines have been luring visitors to virus-laden Web sites that will infect the unwary Websurfer with a simple clink on any of the links. In the last few days, a new twist has made it much more likely that visitors will fall prey.
The spam messages now sport a CNN.com logo, and instead of using made up headlines, they are copying the headlines from other video news services around the Web.
The University of Alabama at Birmingham's Spam Data Mine, which collects millions of email messages used to provide investigators with spam intelligence and determine new attack methods, reports that nearly 10 percent of all e-mails received in the first few hours had the subject "CNN Top 10 Spam", and pointed to more than 25 Web sites that had been hacked to infect their visitors.
Several major anti-virus providers were unable to detect the spam, the UAB researchers warn.
