Hillary Clinton Spam Spreading Malware

Filed in archive Malware on February 16, 2008

Researchers at Symantec and McAfee are reporting a spam that carries a Trojan horse masquarading as a video of Hillary Clinton.

"Hilary [sic] Clinton visited her campaign headquarters in Virginia and did satellite interviews, looking beyond Tuesday's trio of contests and touting the importance of a March 4 vote in Ohio," the bogus e-mail read. "Full video. Download it now!"

Users who did so actually downloaded the "Srizbi" Trojan which added their computer to a botnet. The good news is that this is only the second instance of the 2008 Presidential Campaign being exploited by spammers and it appears that it's a trend that won't be growing.

"We've now seen just two instances of spam using political candidates to spread malicious code," said Oliver Friedrichs, director of Symantec's security response team and a writer on electoral cybercrime. "I think [hackers] are still a little skittish. The high visibility of the federal elections makes them cautious about stepping into it."

Apparently even spammers have their limits!