Sophos is warning that hackers are exploiting interest in the last night's Oscar film awards ceremony to infect the computers of unsuspecting computer users. It detects the attacks Mal/FakeAVJs-A and Troj/FakeAV-AXS. Users are advised to be cautious about the links they click on and ensure that they are running up-to-date antivirus protection.
Users search the web for information and gossip about the Academy Award winners, making phrases like "Oscars Winners" one of the most commonly searched phrase on the internet. However, using SEO (search engine optimization) techniques, hackers have created WebPages which appears to be related to The Oscars, but are really designed to infect visiting computers.
"Many people won't have had the chance to watch The Oscars live on television, and so turn to the internet for news, but careless clicks can lead to a malware attack," explained Graham Cluley, Senior Technology Consultant, Sophos. "Hackers have created poisoned pages that appear on the first page of search engine results, tempting users to click on them. However, if you visit the links you can expect to see bogus warnings that your computer is infected with viruses that try and trick you into downloading dangerous clean-up software or handing over your credit card details. Scareware or fake antivirus attacks like this are an increasingly common weapon in the armory of cyber criminal, jumping on the coat tails of breaking news stories."
