Industry News Home More stories like this... RSS Feed

Hackers smarten up to infect users with malware

Looking for pictures of celebrities can leave you exposed to online threats like viruses which may bog down your PC, users have been warned.

This comes following revelations from security experts that cyber crooks are improving and repackaging their spamming emails in a bid to outsmart spam filters and antivirus software.

According to Security firm BitDefender, users are being lured with alleged video clips with information on celebrities such as Angelina Jolie, Britney Spears and Barack Obama, states the infomatics website.

The messages, which mostly have catchy keywords and appear to be about different kinds of 'news flashes' all end up directing users to a page with either 'stream.html' or 'watchit.html'.

Once attracted to a compromised page, users are encouraged to download a video player, which unfortunately is infected with the Tibs.GZM Trojan

Bogdan Dumitru, chief technology officer at BitDefender, said: "These email messages are part of a larger wave that attempts to infect the user with miscellaneous Trojans."

The news comes amid reports that legitimate websites are now the target of cyber crooks.

For powerful protection against malicious virus infections visit www.pctools.com to upgrade your protection