Nov10
11:31 pm (UTC-7)   |   by Bernadette Irinco (Technical Communications)

U.S. President candidate John McCain plans to impeach president elect Barack Obama, at least according to the latest post-election spam spotted today. Here’s a screenshot of the sample email message:

Figure 1. Politically-tinged spam email just keeps coming

Our researchers have seen the following subject lines containing the same text as the above:

  • Barack Obama in Danger – McCain will fight for the president post
  • McCain Lawmakers Impeach Obama
  • The impeachment of new president Obama
  • Barack Obama can lost President’s Chair.
  • POLITICAL STRIKE TIES
  • McCain Lawyers Want to Stop Obama

This is to rouse the curiosity of users into clicking the link that connects to several malicious Web sites. When users access the sites, a bogus US government official website is displayed. It presents a fake video (actually an image) and tricks the user into downloading a fake Adobe Player installer from a URL ending in AdobePlayer9.exe. Trend Micro detects this file as TROJ_PACKED.JFP. It drops and executes TROJ_ROOTKIT.FX. Smart Protection Network also blocks users from accessing the malicious links in the spam, the fake video, and the URL from which the executable is downloaded.

Election-related spam in the last week:

If you're new here, you may want to subscribe to our RSS feed. Thanks for visiting!




Leave a Reply



© Copyright 2009 Trend Micro Inc. All rights reserved. Legal Notice