Spam Reports

Homer Simpson Recruited to Spread Malware

Malware spreaders will resort to anything that will give them the upper hand

By George Craciun, Security News Editor

12th of July 2008, 09:18 GMT

Adjust text size:

Homer Simpson's handle, chunkylover53, which was registered by Matt Selman, writer and producer of the show, has recently resurfaced and it is being used to spread malware. Users are tempted with the possibility of viewing an "Internet only" episode of "The Simpsons," but that .exe file is nothing more than malware (identified as Kimya.exe).

Kimya.exe is a Trojan that is rather popular amongst hackers all over the world because it enables them to assume nearly complete control of an infected

machine.

Fans of the popular animated TV series "The Simpsons" will remember that in one episode Homer said his e-mail address was chunkylover53@aol.com. At the time, hoards of fans added Homer's address to their AIM contact list, and even sent e-mails to the previously mentioned address (which were answered by the show's writers). The number of e-mails received was astounding - no sooner were some answered that hundreds more would come in.

The thing is that the AIM handle chunkylover53, unlike chunkylover53@aol.com, is not related to the show. The AOL e-mail address was indeed registered by Matt Selman, but the AIM contact could have been set up by just about anybody cunning enough to take advantage of the situation, just like the Turkish botnet accused of spreading Kimya.exe did. For the past 4 months, the activity of this botnet has been considerably increasing.

Christopher Boyd, from FaceTime Security Labs comments on the organization's blog: "We've reported all links related to this attack, and at least two of the files claiming to be 'exclusive Simpsons episodes' are currently offline, though there's bound to be more out there. For now, this is a good reminder to be cautious when randomly adding cool things seen on TV and film to your online applications - you can't always assume the person at the other end is entirely in control, or indeed, related to what you're looking for in the first place."

In related news, a telephone number was recently aired during the "Dr. Who" television series, a thing that has determined about 2,500 people to call it. Of course, the number was fictitious, but this did not stop fans from trying to find out more things about the show.

TAGS:

malware | Simpsons | security

SEARCH THE NEWS ARCHIVE :

Today's News | Yesterday's News | News Archive

User opinions:

No user comments yet.

Be the first to express your opinion using the form below!

Share your opinion:

SUBMIT PROGRAM \| ADVERTISE \| GET HELP \| SEND US FEEDBACK \| RSS FEEDS \| ENTER NEWS SITE \| ENGLISH BOARD \| ROMANIAN FORUM
© 2001 - 2008 Softpedia. All rights reserved. Softpedia™ and the Softpedia™ logo are registered trademarks of SoftNews NET SRL.	Copyright Information \| Privacy Policy \| Terms of Use \| Update your software \| Archive

NEWS CATEGORIES: