- Jan 24, 2011
- 9,378
Security researchers warn about scams leveraging news of the earthquake that hit the northeast coast of Japan yesterday, leading to renewed fears about the unstable situation at the Fukushima Daiichi nuclear plant.
A 7.1 magnitude earthquake believed to be an aftershock of the one that generated a devastating tsunami on March 11, struck at 11:32pm yesterday 50km off the coast of Miyagi prefecture.
A tsunami warning was issued immediately, as officials feared 1 meter high waves, but this proved to be a false alarm and it was later lifted.
Everyone's attention then focused towards the damaged nuclear plant, but its administrators reported no signs of new problems.
Nevertheless, cybercriminals did not miss the chance to capitalize on people's interest into the incident.
Symantec reports that Portuguese-language scam emails originating in Brazil were detected soon after the quake struck.
One if them had a subject of "New tsunami hits Japan Sendai and declares state of emergency in nuclear plant" and included a video player thumbnail.
Clicking on it prompted users to download an executable file called XAR485849834.exe which was a banking trojan installer.
Another rogue email's subject read "Watch the video recorded at the time of the tsunami in Japan" and contained a link to a malware-spreading site.
More details - link
A 7.1 magnitude earthquake believed to be an aftershock of the one that generated a devastating tsunami on March 11, struck at 11:32pm yesterday 50km off the coast of Miyagi prefecture.
A tsunami warning was issued immediately, as officials feared 1 meter high waves, but this proved to be a false alarm and it was later lifted.
Everyone's attention then focused towards the damaged nuclear plant, but its administrators reported no signs of new problems.
Nevertheless, cybercriminals did not miss the chance to capitalize on people's interest into the incident.
Symantec reports that Portuguese-language scam emails originating in Brazil were detected soon after the quake struck.
One if them had a subject of "New tsunami hits Japan Sendai and declares state of emergency in nuclear plant" and included a video player thumbnail.
Clicking on it prompted users to download an executable file called XAR485849834.exe which was a banking trojan installer.
Another rogue email's subject read "Watch the video recorded at the time of the tsunami in Japan" and contained a link to a malware-spreading site.
More details - link
