Wave of spams counter Facebook joy over Osama’s death

May 03, 2011 |

Washington

Tags:

Osama Bin Laden

A Facebook page rejoicing over Osama bin-Laden’s death with around 3,50,000 fans, was quickly targeted by spammers.

Following his killing on Sunday night, these spammers had unleashed a wave of new spam emails, disrupted search results, and specially crafted websites to mislead people seeking news, Fox News reports.

According to reports, leading security firm Kaspersky Lab had begun detecting spam e-mail campaigns and Web pages built especially to game the major search engines within hours of the first reports that the terrorist leader was tracked down by U.S. forces in Abbottabad, Pakistan.

Kaspersky analyst Fabio Assolini said few hours after US President Barack Obama announced the result of the combat operation, the company began finding Search Engine Optimised (SEO) Web pages offering news of bin Laden's death and claiming to offer his photographs.

Clicking those links directed Web surfers to malicious Web pages that try to install Best Antivirus 2011, a rogue anti malware program, Assolini said.

He also said another Kaspersky researcher uncovered a Facebook spam campaign offering 'free subway rides and plane tickets' to 'celebrate Osama's death', adding that users who visited the malicious page were asked to enter personal information to win a prize, but ended up spamming their own friends with the solicitation.

"Anytime there is a major event there are always spammers," he warned.

Post new comment

<form action="/comment/reply/71673" accept-charset="UTF-8" method="post" id="comment-form"> <div><div class="form-item" id="edit-name-wrapper"> <label for="edit-name">Your name: <span class="form-required" title="This field is required.">*</span></label> <input type="text" maxlength="60" name="name" id="edit-name" size="30" value="Reader" class="form-text required" /> </div> <div class="form-item" id="edit-mail-wrapper"> <label for="edit-mail">E-Mail Address: <span class="form-required" title="This field is required.">*</span></label> <input type="text" maxlength="64" name="mail" id="edit-mail" size="30" value="" class="form-text required" /> <div class="description">The content of this field is kept private and will not be shown publicly.</div> </div> <div class="form-item" id="edit-comment-wrapper"> <label for="edit-comment">Comment: <span class="form-required" title="This field is required.">*</span></label> <textarea cols="60" rows="15" name="comment" id="edit-comment" class="form-textarea resizable required"></textarea> </div> <fieldset class=" collapsible collapsed"><legend>Input format</legend><div class="form-item" id="edit-format-1-wrapper"> <label class="option" for="edit-format-1"><input type="radio" id="edit-format-1" name="format" value="1" class="form-radio" /> Filtered HTML</label> <div class="description"><ul class="tips"><li>Web page addresses and e-mail addresses turn into links automatically.</li><li>Allowed HTML tags: <a> <em> <strong> <cite> <code> <ul> <ol> <li> <dl> <dt> <dd></li><li>Lines and paragraphs break automatically.</li></ul></div> </div> <div class="form-item" id="edit-format-2-wrapper"> <label class="option" for="edit-format-2"><input type="radio" id="edit-format-2" name="format" value="2" checked="checked" class="form-radio" /> Full HTML</label> <div class="description"><ul class="tips"><li>Web page addresses and e-mail addresses turn into links automatically.</li><li>Lines and paragraphs break automatically.</li></ul></div> </div> </fieldset> <input type="hidden" name="form_build_id" id="form-8700758b50c680cd401f7f9eb44475b2" value="form-8700758b50c680cd401f7f9eb44475b2" /> <input type="hidden" name="form_id" id="edit-comment-form" value="comment_form" /> <fieldset class="captcha"><legend>CAPTCHA</legend><div class="description">This question is for testing whether you are a human visitor and to prevent automated spam submissions.</div><input type="hidden" name="captcha_sid" id="edit-captcha-sid" value="87895403" /> <input type="hidden" name="captcha_response" id="edit-captcha-response" value="NLPCaptcha" /> <div class="form-item"> <div id="nlpcaptcha_ajax_api_container"><script type="text/javascript"> var NLPOptions = {key:'c4823cf77a2526b0fba265e2af75c1b5'};</script><script type="text/javascript" src="http://call.nlpcaptcha.in/js/captcha.js" ></script></div> </div> </fieldset> <span class="btn-left"><span class="btn-right"><input type="submit" name="op" id="edit-submit" value="Save" class="form-submit" /></span></span> </div></form>