With Obama becoming the 44th President of the United States it naturally gives hackers a new subject to focus on when spreading malware to computer users over the internet. Security analysts have discovered Obama related spam campaigns and a situation where people are being redirected from an official Barack Obama website to one with malware.
I closer look at one of the latest spam campaigns will reveal that the malware creators are using a community blog section of the Barack Obama website to send people to malicious websites. The action that initially prompts this situation is a web search for terms such as "obama trojan anti-virus" or "obama anti-virus" which will then send you to the Obama Community Blog page. From there the community blog page may contain an animated gif. Image, if clicked on, will send you to a site that contains malware.
Because President Elect Barack Obama is one of the most talked about topics in the world today, hackers have a good chance on infecting thousands of computer users with various types of malware by use of Obama keyword tactics. Other campaigns such as various spam related messages, are sent using the following subject lines:
- Election Night Results
- Can Obama win popular vote but lose election?
- New president's
- Obama win preferred in world poll
- Will American Voters Elect a Black President
All of the above subjects are very popular due to the recent election and all of the hype that surrounds it. If you ever receive any emails similar to the subjects above then it is best to use caution when viewing the content of each message. Do not ever download any attachments on emails that you are unsure of the sender. Usually the body or message of these spam emails are all similar and you may quickly recognize them. Below is just one example of the message in one of the Obama spam campaign emails.
Example the body of an Obama related spam message:
Barack Obama Elected 44th President of United States
Barack Obama, unknown to most Americans just four years ago, will become the 44th president and the first African-American president of the United States.
Watch His amazing speech at November 5!
Proceed to the election results news page
2008 American Government Official Website
This site delivers information about current U.S. Foreign policy and about American life and culture.
This is a classic case where a video link may redirect you to a malicious site to download malware onto your computer.
Everyone can do their part in identifying and avoiding spam messages and malware campaigns. It is best to stay up to date and educate yourself on the latest threats and malspam campaigns that are currently plaguing people over the internet. It is also a good recommendation to keep your anti-spyware and anti-virus software up-to-date and running at all times.