Gwen Stefani, one of today’s most popular solo recording artists and frontgal for the group No Doubt, died in a car crash this week, according to a new malware scheme that’s making its way around the Internet and into an inbox near you soon.
Fortunately, Stefani is alive and well, but as eSecurity Planet reports, the malware syndicates have found a new way to harvest clicks without having to wait for legitimate celebrity or world news and events to occur.
They’ve even gone so far as to include a malicious attachment that says something like “CNN Hot News.zip (106KB)” to further entice people to make one little click.
Of course the bogus CNN zip file is actually an .exe file, specifically a “downloader” that opens a backdoor on the targeted PC or mobile device that can be used later down the road to install multiple types of malware on the affected computer.
Malware purveyors know people love to click on links about celebrities with reckless abandon, particularly if the pop-culture icon has run afoul of the law, cheated on his wife or endured some other sordid sort of misfortune.
All things considered, it’s actually kind of surprising that it took scamsters so long to come up with the latest malware scheme making its way across the Web and into millions of users’ inboxes.
Why wait for legitimate celebrity-related news before launching a malware assault when you can make it up on your own?
According to security software vendor AppRiver, the crooks are using a subjects such as “Gwen Stefani Fatal Car Crash” to get people to open up the unsolicited emails.