People fearing to get infected with Swine Flu may be infected with malware

While people around the globe are getting more and more concerned about the fast spreading plague of Influenza strain known as Swine Flu cyber criminals found their way to arrange their shady deals even with this event. Swine Flu became a hot topic used in the subject lines of spam messages sent to Internet users worldwide.

David Marcus, a blogger at McAfee Avert Labs Blog, noted that prior to last weekend Swine Flu spam was almost unheard of and started getting rampant since Monday. McAfee Avert Labs Blog shows that the largest chunk of Swine Flu spam originates in Brazil, but sizable portions also came from the United States and United Kingdom.

The blog reports that “on any given day there is between 80 to 170 billion email messages with 78 to 90 percent of that number being spam, sending with the subject of “swine flu” which “gives these criminals a high chance of success due to the media attention the subject is already getting.”

The spam in some cases directs unsuspected victims to the malicious sites which try to install malware onto your PC. Cybercrooks use the old hackneyed method to lure Internet subscribers into clicking a malware link by offering to download a fake codec. McAfee says that “in this case its a redirect to a Russian-based site”.

Marcus concludes: “Malware writers, spammers and scammers are low lives. They will use any high media event or high impact news story to push their wares including the sickness and misery of others. Stay vigilant and stay safe. Should you need credible information on the influenza pandemic then go to The World Health Organization website.”