IRCNE2011051097
3 May 2011
The announcement late Sunday of the death of al-Qaeda leader Osama bin Laden will undoubtedly be one of the most significant news events this year, so malware makers and scammers have quickly latched onto the news that U.S. military forces killed Osama Bin Laden, security researchers said today.
Cybercrooks can trick the search-ranking algorithms of popular search engines by feeding them fake pages to make their sites seem legitimate, increasing the chances that Internet users searching for news land on a site dispensing malware, warned Paul Ducklin, head of technology at IT security firm Sophos, in a post on the company's web site.
Antivirus vendors have spotted multiple threats based on the news, including links that lead to fake security software -- dubbed "rogueware" -- attack code masquerading as plug-ins that users must supposedly download to view video, and attempts to harvest personal information.
Twitter reported that its site carried more than 4,000 messages per second at the beginning and end of Obama's speech. The death of bin Laden, Abottabad, and Navy Seal, the special operations force that killed bin Laden, were among the top topics being discussed on Twitter a couple of hours after Obama's announcement.
Google Trends also reported that "osama bin laden dead" was the hottest search on May 1 in the U.S., followed by some other search items that are related to the death of bin Laden:
- Osama Bin Laden Dead
- Osama Bin Laden Dead 2011
- Osama Bin Laden Dead or Alive
- Islamabad
- Al Qaeda
- Navy Seals
- Obama Address
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