Is Fidel Castro Dead or Is It a Worm in Your Email?

Fidel Castro's act of transferring his power to his brother, Raul, just a couple of weeks ago (don’t think about it in the Highlander way of taking the other’s power!) gave cyber criminals a business idea. Seeing as they would take advantage of anything and not shying away from profiting off of disasters and charities, they thought that waiting a little and then spamming with emails about the Cuban leader’s death would really be a hit.

The email, Panda Labs’ blog writes, is entitled Mala Noticia (Bad News) and repeatedly makes reference to the alleged death of the legendary fighter. The worm included ‘compliments of the house’ is W32/FakeDeath.A.worm, and this cannot be anything short of a big laugh. The cyber criminals must have the worms they send classified and categorized by the subject else they could have come up with something better than FakeDeath. Imagine you have an anti-virus running that detects the attacks and the malicious code trying to find its way onto your computer, letting you know upfront that what you were reading was a hoax.

The email says, as per usual with this type of attacks, that further information on Castro’s death can be found by clicking a link to a video, and if users follow their curiosity there, they will be redirected to a website displaying the news published by the Diario Clarin newspaper on the 30th of August, 1997, about the fake death of the former president. At the same time, the worm is downloaded to the computer, and its aim is to spread via peer to peer programs.

Yet another classic example of fake news bringing malware to our computers and nothing more. Be careful, though, with every single email whose sender you don’t recognize that makes it to your inbox, because chances are it’s infected, and that’s not something you want to be as well.

MORE RELATED ARTICLES: All Hail AdWare, King of Malware Bring the Heavy Guns, Viruses Fight Dirty Cyber Criminals Uninstalling Each Others’ Malware Valentine’s Day Worms, Trojans and Spam Storm Spreading Valentine’s Day Love