Spam News

Spam offers Obama opponents chance to DDoS White House

Wednesday, August 19, 2009

A spam email detected by email security firm Proofpoint attempts to exploit anti-Obama sentiment by offering recipients a chance to launch distributed denial-of-service (DDoS) cyberattacks on the White House - if they just download malware onto their PC.

The email subject heading says "Here You can buy DDoS" and in the body says "If You dont like Obama come here, you can help to ddos his site with your installs [sic]."

A link in the body takes users to a website that offers to pay visitors to install malware on their machines and advises them to return to the website for updated versions of the malware if it is detected by anti-virus software on their PC.

As the security experts at Proofpoint noted, voluntarily downloading malware onto your computer is a very bad idea.

But this spam points to how well the spammers and cybercriminals track popular trends to better target victims with their scams and malicious payloads.

In the wake of the inauguration of the new president, when his popularity was sky high, spammers tried to exploit pro-Obama sentiment. Now that his popularity is waning, the spammers shift gears to exploit the surge in opposition to his policies.