Beware swine flu spam, says Symantec

It hasn’t taken long for the Internet’s dark side to emerge in the wake of the swine flu scare. Symantec reports that there has been a sudden increase in the use of swine flu-related subject lines by spammers seeking to infect your PC.

It hasn't taken long for the Internet's dark side to emerge in the wake of the swine flu scare. Symantec reports that there has been a sudden increase in the use of swine flu-related subject lines by spammers seeking to infect your PC.

The most common threat is appearing the form of a .pdf attachment labeled "Swine influenza frequently asked questions". When opened, malcode within the PDF attempts to exploit an old Adobe vulnerability  in order to drop malware on the local computer.

The .pdf may arrive under a number of different swine flu-related subject lines. Symantec says the top 10 are:

1.       Swine flu in USA

2.       Salma Hayek caught swine flu!

3.       US swine flu statistics

4.       Swine flu in Hollywood!

5.       NY victims of swine flu

6.       Swine flu worldwide!

7.       Madonna caught swine flu!

8.       First US swine flu victims!

9.       Will swine flu attack USA?

10.   US swine flu fears

To stay current with the latest swine flu-related spam attacks, you can follow Symantec's blog on the topic at: https://forums2.symantec.com/t5/blogs/blogarticlepage/blog-id/spam/article-id/181

Filed Under: Computers & Software > Found on the Web > Web/Tech