Vladimir Putin Death Spam Spreads Trojan

Experts at SophosLabs, Sophos’s global network of virus, spyware and spam analysis centers, have warned of a spam campaign that poses as a breaking news report about the death of Russian President Vladimir Putin, but is really an attempt by hackers to infect computer users with a Trojan horse. Embedded in the HTML email is a hidden script that exploits the ADODB.Stream vulnerability to secretly download the malicious Troj/Dloadr-ZP Trojan horse from a Russian website. The Trojan horse is designed to download further malicious code which could allow remote hackers to gain unauthorized access to the victim’s computer. Although the link pretends to be that of a BBC News report, the user is really directed to another Russian website purporting to be the home of a construction firm focused on providing heating systems for apartments and advertising training seminars. “It appears whoever sent this spam is trying to discredit the Russian firm in what we call a ‘joe job’, that is a spam campaign forged to appear as though it came from an innocent party, with the intention of incriminating or pinning blame onto them”, said Graham Cluley, senior technology consultant for Sophos.