Not a “Thriller”

Hours after the death of Michael Jackson, the first wave of spam began hitting in-boxes. Currently the email, with a subject line “Confidential – Michael Jackson”, is not pitching a product or directing you to a malicious website but it is trying to get people to reply to capture email addresses.

Graham Cluley, a Sophos senior technology consultant, said “Undoubtedly we'll see more with Jackson. Actually, spammers and hackers have done Jackson before. Several years ago they pitched a breaking news story, claiming that he had attempted suicide."

Right now, there are only guesses as to what hackers may do to use the pop singer’s death as a means to deploy bots. One thought was top-secret hospital footage to get you to download software to view it.

You should also use caution with results from searches run with the singer’s name. There has already been search engine manipulation relating to Farah Fawcett who also just recently passed. Criminals will create web pages with keywords and news stories in order to get them to the top of search lists. If you go to one of the sites, they drop malware on your box.

The best thing that you can do is be cautious, update your virus definitions and OS patches. Don’t just install any software. 

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