Thursday May 5, 2011 EST
BOSTON (Reuters) - Hackers are exploiting the fascination with the death of Osama bin Laden to spread malware through scams that promise access to videos the time of his death.
One campaign is targeted at users of Facebook, who received emails purportedly from friends urging them to copy and paste a series of allegedly malicious text would give them access to a video about the death of Bin Laden
When users follow the instructions in the email, end up giving full access to their accounts from hackers, said Mikko Hypponen, chief research officer for antivirus maker F-Secure.
hackers then use this access to spread viruses and junk e-mails sent to the user's friends said. Another
campaign that exploits the death of the leader of Al Qaeda uses regular emails full of links to infected sites that lead to malicious software downloads on the computer, Hypponen said.
Hackers plan such attacks - techniques known as 'phishing' - to take advantage of a wide range of news. Similar campaigns were launched related to the royal wedding, the tsunami in Japan and the World Cup soccer finals.
The 'phishing' scams is for trying to get personal information such as passwords and credit card numbers, by deception through e-mail or instant messaging services.
"They always have something ready to send in case", said Jeff Moss, head of security of the Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers (ICANN, for its acronym in English). "Whenever there is an earthquake, tsunami, famine or something," he added.
few hours after the earthquake in Japan, hackers have begun to fill technical Internet 'phishing' taking advantage of the tsunami, said Moss.
viruses that are downloaded are often programmed to steal personal information, said the FBI to consumers.
Hypponen said he expected to scams on Bin Laden continue for months.
"We know there is a video" he said. "We know it will not be disclosed, which means that people will be curious for a long time," he added
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