Aliens Working for McCain Campaign?…. Film at Eleven !

15. July 2008 by admin.

Dang… I didn’t know that Barack Obama had an affair with Hilary Clinton… Wow…

Or, at least that was the subject line on an email I received this morning.  It even sneaked through my SPAM filter, apparently unscathed.

Of course, the yellow journalists haven’t really moved their wares from the supermarket checkout rack to the world wide web… And Obama didn’t really have an affair with Hilary (I hope).

This is just the Storm Worm using sensational, or should I say ‘SINsational’  “headlines” to try and regain a foot-hold after having lost some ground during April and May as a direct result of Microsoft’s security efforts.

So if you get an email about Barack or Britney or McCain or Martians at Madonna’s, don’t become a Storm Worm statistic.  The hackers who wrote the malware with its hundreds of variants are really good at exploiting human weaknesses.

Some examples of the headlines:
“Beijing Olympics canceled due to terrorists’ dirty bomb threats.”
“Oil actually less than $75 a barrel.
“Scandal rocks Obama campaign as sex video is leaked.”
“Jessica Simpson found dead in bathtub.”

The security firm MessageLabs has reported that the average user is getting about 60 of these phony news releases every day.  With overwhelming numbers like that, and human nature being what it is, the Storm Worm will most likely expand exponentially once again.  Try not to help them.

The Storm Worm appeared on the scene early in 2007, with a sensational headline about deadly storms that hit Europe — “230 dead as storm batters Europe,” it said, offering a link to what was supposed to be the full story. The hundreds of thousands that fell for for that little trick found themselves to be the original infectees of the Storm worm.

How do you avoid becoming a statistic yourself?  Simple…never ever click on a link in an e-mail, no matter how interesting it may sound. As we tell clients of my Delaware network support company;  If you weren’t expecting an email and can’t confirm who sent it, DO NOT OPEN IT !   You may just create a nuisance, but you also may bankrupt your company with that one thoughtless, errant click.

If you really, really, really MUST know if Brad Pitt is the first pregnant man, go to a legit news site.  If it’s all that sensational, it will be there, for sure.

Good Luck and Good Networking,

From way down in the trenches…. I’m Tom

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