Analysis by: Cyril Coronado

The death of a well-known celebrity or personality has always proven to be cybercriminal fodder, and Margaret Thatcher's passing, Great Britain's former Prime Minister, is no exception. Trendlabs engineers received samples of a Blackhole Exploit Kit spam campaign leveraging the event. The malicious spam itself is fairly simple, only sporting two lines of text, with the second one a link that supposedly leads to an article regarding the deceased personality's strong beliefs. Should users click the offered link, they will be instead led to malicious websites that will automatically download and execute malware in the user's systems.

Users are reminded to anticipate malicious cybercriminal efforts such as spam campaigns whenever breaking news events (calamities, celebrity deaths, controversies) have occurred or are occurring.

Trend Micro™ Smart Protection Network™ protects users from this threat by blocking the spam mail samples, as well as any related malicious URLs and malware.
 SPAM BLOCKING DATE / TIME: April 10, 2013 GMT-8
 TMASE INFO
  • ENGINE:7.0
  • PATTERN:9790