14 DAY TRIAL // What will they think of next? Now with the Jackson trial in progress, hackers found the best opportunity to strike once again, by releasing the "Jackson" virus on the internet.
As we told you in our previous article on the subject, the virus spreads by means of a spam e-mail, entitled "Re: Suicide aattempt," which redirects the user towards a website. The website is busy, which is understandable, since a lot of people would be very interested in such news.
"If you click on the link the Website displays a message saying it is too busy, which may not surprise people who think it might contain genuine breaking news about Michael Jackson. However, this is a diversionary tactic - because behind the scenes the website is downloading malware onto the user's computer without their knowledge." said Carole Theriault, security consultant at Sophos, the British company that issued the virus warning.
The company has determined that once the malicious code is downloaded, it attempts to download another Trojan horse which Sophos detects as Troj/Borobt-Gen.
However, this is not the first time the Jackson name is used in these malevolent purposes. In October 2004, Internet messages claiming that incriminating home videos belonging to Jackson had been discovered, actually linked to infected Web surfers with the Hackarmy Trojan horse, and Janet Jackson's Superbowl wardrobe malfunction has also been an inspiration for virus attacks.