Malware criminals generally revert to old-school social engineering as they continually employ another newsworthy item in their latest ploys.

Just recently, TrendLabs Content Security team discovered spam email messages that rode on interest around the case of Alexandre Nardoni. Nardoni, a law consultant, who was accused of allegedly killing his daughter, Isabella Nardoni, in their apartment in Sao Paulo. Later on, he pleaded not guilty and was released from jail.

The email, which claims to be from Youtube News, tricks users into clicking the malicious link that promises actual footage of Nardoni’s arrest. When users click on the link, a dialog box appears requiring the users to save the executable file. The said file, named VIDEO.EXE, is actually a malware detected by Trend as MAL_BANKER.

This is not the first time (and no doubt the last) that malware criminals employ the popularity of current news as previously blogged here and here. Consumers are always advised to be suspicious when opening email messages from unknown senders. Trend Micro users are already protected from this threat, as we detect both the malware and the spam message that carries it.