14 DAY TRIAL // Security researchers warn that scareware pushers have already poisoned search results for queries related to the untimely death of Brittany Murphy. Malicious links attempt to trick visitors into downloading and installing fake antivirus software.
American actress and singer Brittany Murphy, best known for the roles she played in movies such as "Clueless," "8 Mile" or "Sin City," passed away last Sunday on December 21. The 32-year-old celebrity was found collapsed in the bathroom by her family, who unsuccessfully tried to revive her.
As the news broke out, the search engine traffic for keywords related to the unfortunate event skyrocketed and as expected, cybercrooks jumped at the occasion to make some victims. By employing what are known as black hat search engine optimization (BHSEO) techniques, the malware distributors succeeded in poisoning related search engine results with malicious URLs.
"Cybercriminals have been found riding on Brittany Murphy’s sudden death to scare people into buying FAKEAV," warn security researchers from antivirus vendor Trend Micro. FAKEAV refers to a specific malware family, which contains applications that pose as antivirus programs and erroneously try to convince users that their computers are infected.
"Users who click poisoned search results will be alerted to supposed malware infections via a fake message prompt, followed by bogus scanning results and another message prompting them to download a FAKEAV to rid their system of the infection," the Trend specialists explain. They also warn that once installed on the system, this application will proceed to download other malware from remote servers.
These programs are collectively known in the information security industry as scareware or rogueware and represent one of the most successful models for illegally generating income on the Internet. Some of them have recently started to adopt a more aggressive approach, known as ransomware, where they block critical system functionality until a license fee is paid.
Malware distributors are notoriously known for taking advantage of events that generate a lot of interest from the public and they exploited the deaths of other celebrities in the past. Such was the case with Michael Jackson, Farrah Fawcett or Natasha Richardson earlier this year.