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Zero Day

Ryan Naraine and Dancho Danchev

'Steve Jobs Alive!' emails lead to exploits and malware

By | October 11, 2011, 12:13pm PDT

Summary: Security researchers from M86 Labs have intercepted a currently spreading malware campaign using Steve Jobs as a social engineering theme.

Cybercriminals are quick to capitalize on the death of Steve Jobs.

Security researchers from M86 Labs have intercepted a currently spreading malware campaign using Steve Jobs as a social engineering theme.

Sample subjects used in the campaign:

Steve Jobs Alive!; Steve Jobs Not Dead!; Steve Jobs: Not Dead Yet!; Is Steve Jobs Really Dead?

Upon clicking on the links the visitors are redirected to a obfuscated malware-serving page, courtesy of a popular web malware exploitation kit known as the BlackHole exploit kit. The exploit kit attempts to exploit popular client-side vulnerabilities in installed applications or browser plugins.

Users are advised not to interact with suspicious emails, or spam emails in general.

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Topics

Dancho Danchev is an independent security consultant and cyber threats analyst, with extensive experience in open source intelligence gathering, malware and cybercrime incident response.

Disclosure

Dancho Danchev

More details on Dancho Danchev's current and past professional affiliations, can be found in his LinkedIn profile.

Biography

Dancho Danchev

Dancho Danchev is an independent security consultant and cyber threats analyst, with extensive experience in open source intelligence gathering, and cybercrime incident response. He's been an active security blogger since 2007, and maintains a popular security blog sharing real-time threats intelligence data with the rest of the community on a daily basis. More details on Dancho Danchev's current and past professional affiliations, can be found in his LinkedIn profile. You can also follow him on Twitter

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