Phishers Exploit Gulf Coast Disaster

Antivirus vendor Sophos has spotted phishing scams posing as breaking news reports about the Hurricane Katrina disaster. The email uses a blurb from a legitimate news story, then provides a link to read the rest of the article. Instead of news of the disaster, the link leads to a booby-trapped website that downloads malicious code onto vulnerable PCs.

"Receiving or reading the emails themselves does not mean you are infected," said Gregg Mastoras, senior security analyst for Sophos. "However, if users click on the link contained inside the email, they will be taken to a malicious website that will try and infect their computer. Once infected, the computer is under the control of remote criminal hackers who can use it to spy, steal or cause disruption."

"Similar to the tsunami tragedy, this hurricane is another dreadful natural disaster that these ruthless hackers are exploiting in order to break into computers for spamming, extortion and theft," continued Mastoras.

Further information and an image of the bogus website can be found at: http://www.sophos.com/virusinfo/articles/katrina.html