Trojan malware masquerading as Harry Potter movie downloads
Friday, July 17, 2009
Cybercriminals seeking to exploit the popularity of the Harry Potter film franchise have been spreading Trojan malware-infected links to phony movie downloads on social networking sites and in blogs filled with search terms to get them ranked higher in search engines.
The blogs and links on social networks attempt to lure unsuspecting Potter fans with come-ons like, "Watch 'Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince' movie 2009 online for free," according to PC Tools, in a post to its ThreatFire blog.
When a user clicks on the link to see the movie, they are told to download a movie file "streamviewer," which is actually a Trojan downloader that installs a variety of malware on the user's PC, including the koobface worm, adware, scareware, spam bots and spyware.
PC Tools said it has been tracking the IP address where the files originate and reports that the cybercriminals have been pushing blackhat SEO tactics to exploit hype over upcoming movie releases.
"This is headline malware," said PC Tools' Mike Greene, according to the NYtimes.com Bits blog. "When Michael Jackson passed away we saw a surge around that. Whenever you see a headline, you can be pretty confident you will find some hot malware."
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