Swine Flu Scams

Even with this first, passive wave of H1N1 swine flu diminishing, scams are on the rise. Websense reports a huge number of email scams based on news (usually false) around the H1N1 swine flu. End users being concerned about a possible pandemic are eager to learn the latest news and with sensationalized subject lines, it isn’t hard for them to click on a link, or open an attachment where they think they will learn more.

According to the Websense announcement: “The malicious Web site that is redirected is typical: it asks the user to install a missing codec to watch a video, and the download codec is a Trojan Downloader. Until now, these kinds of sites just used hot topics to attract users; we suspect that they will use more advanced SEO techniques to infect more users in the future.”