CNN Fake News Update Spam: Morphs and Massiveness
Volumes still very high...dropping s-l-o-w-l-y
The MX Logic Threat Operations Center has been a hoppin' place since the CNN Fake News updates that we originally reported the other day started coming in.
Volumes peaked at over 10M messages per hour (stopping just short of 11M) on the morning of the 7th and have been on a very slow, but steady decline since then. That isn't to say that the threat has gone away, however as since midnight we are still seeing an average of 8M per hour hitting our systems.
Below is a graph showing per hour volumes of the fake CNN news updates starting from 8/4 at 5pm MDT:
We've also seen several morphs of this spam over the past couple of days. Initial variants used the same subject line of "CNN.com Daily Top 10" linking to malware infected sites using the filename index2.htm (e.g. http://infectedsite.com/index2.html)l. Up until this morning we have seen several different filenames at the end of the URL (e.g. cnnlive.html, cnnnews.html, cnnonline.html, cnnplus.html, cnntop.html, and cnnvideo.html), but no movement in the subject line. As of this morning we are seeing a new morph using the subject line of "CNN Alerts: My Custom Alert." This is likely in response to all of the media attention and awareness that has been brought up over the past couple of days with respect to the original fake news update spam.
We've also noticed that in some cases the pages being linked to in these spam messages are being hosted on legitimate web sites. One of the recent variants that we have seen linked to hxxp://scsroofing.com/cnntop.html. Scsroofing.com is (according to the site) "UK based company offering specialist independent advise on all aspects of industrial and commercial roofing"
According to Websense, they are also seeing this campaign being distributed via blog spam, which could account for some of the drops in volume that we have been seeing over the past 24 hours.
Continue to be on the lookout for these new variants as well as others that may crop up. Also be aware that with the Olympics now underway in Beijing that we may see similar types of messages relating to news and video updates related to the Games.
We will continue to post updates as they come in.
Categories: Spam
Posted by smasiello at 9:31 AM | Link | 4 comments
Comments
Re: CNN Fake News Update Spam: Morphs and Massiveness
I would like to know how to get this cnn virus off.
Posted by brenda on August 11, 2008 at 11:24 PM
Re: CNN Fake News Update Spam: Morphs and Massiveness
Got another one now...
msnbc.com: BREAKING NEWS: Microsoft buys over AOL
same thing , tries to download adobe_flash.exe etc..
msnbc.com: BREAKING NEWS: Microsoft buys over AOL
same thing , tries to download adobe_flash.exe etc..
Posted by Peter W on August 13, 2008 at 4:43 AM
Re: CNN Fake News Update Spam: Morphs and Massiveness
GeekSquad is very good at removing this threat (the fake Xp Antivirus/Vista Antivirus)They have a removal tool that scans with about 10 different antivirus and antispyware programs while your computer is not actually booted into the OS. Most of the time XP Antivirus or whatever creates a folder in c:\program files\ called XPav wav vav xpav2008 or something similar. You have to end-task on all the programs running and delete the folder. If you see a .dat file in there you can delete that sometimes and reboot and the program will crash. However XPAV almost always brings in friends like Trojan Zlob, or Virtumonde/Vundo which are much harder to remove. Installing antivirus and antispyware software afterwards usually is not effective in removal.
Posted by Jason on August 14, 2008 at 1:48 PM
Re: CNN Fake News Update Spam: Morphs and Massiveness
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