Global security firm Sophos has issued a global warning to users to be wary of unsolicited emails posing as breaking news reports.
The comes after the widespread distribution of a message which claims Mr Howard was in Sydney’s Royal North Shore Hospital fighting for his life after a heart attack suffered at Kirribilli House.
The emails pretend to link to a story from The Australian newspaper. The bogus news story points to a web site containing malicious code.
Clicking on the link takes users to a web page which downloads malicious code into their PC, and then displays the real ‘404 page not found’ error page used by The Australian on the news.com.au site.
The Prime Minister is the latest in a long line of public figures to be used by malware authors and hackers. Politicians like George W Bush, Arnold Schwarenegger, Ronald Reagan and Bill Clinton have been used in the past.
“It seems the hackers are back to their old tricks of spamming out sensational headlines in the hope that computer users will forget to think before they click, and visit the website hosting the malignant code,” said Sophos senior technology consultant Graham Cluley.
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