It's a scam, of course, but this is exactly the sort of high visibility story that the
scammers use to push malware:
It's the moment malware writers worldwide have been waiting ages for:
millions of royal-watchers at home and at work will be in front of
their computers, hunting for the first pictures of the soon-to-be-born
third heir to the throne.
The Duchess of Cambridge's labour has
started, it was confirmed this morning. Any baby (whatever its sex) will
be third in line to become the Britain's king or queen following recent
changes in UK law.
And as with many a popular story - be it a
natural disaster or celebrity death - malware-flingers have long been
gestating plenty of scams and malware which they are more than ready to
deliver.
"Malware authors worldwide have been waiting ages for
this," according to anti-malware veteran turned independent security
blogger Graham Cluley.
No comment on whether people waiting breathlessly for news of the heir to the house of Windsor
are more gullible:
Washington, D.C. (SatireWire.com) — With yet another email virus
spreading across the globe, 41 U.S. states and six European countries
today announced that the act of creating an attachment-based computer
virus will now be considered a hate crime because it intentionally
targets stupid people.
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Hate crime victim Bob Fnork (center) is stunned to discover he has just opened another infected attachment.
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"In a hate crime, the offender is motivated by the victim's personal
characteristics, and in the case of email viruses, the maker is clearly
singling out those who open email attachments when they've been told a
thousand times not to," said California Attorney General Bill Lockyer.
"Like any other segment of the population, people of stupidity need
protection from bias."
France, meanwhile, said it would not prosecute anyone willing to write a virus in French.
But in London, the British Civil Idiots Union applauded the move,
arguing that virus-based hate crimes cause victims to suffer
psychological harm. "Every time we pass on one of these emails, our
self-esteem is shattered when we are forced to publicize our condition,"
said CIU President Michael Overly. "It's always a shock to my system
every time I have to write, "Hey everybody, if you get an email
attachment from me, don't open it! I just found out my computer got
infected by a virus! Sorry!"
Let's all be careful out there.
5 comments:
I pity the poor fools who fall for email scams hidden behind royal news. You'd think they'd... oh, hey, cool! I've been invited to join a closed beta of the next World of Warcraft update!
(Disclosure: Yes, I fell for the WoW scam. My son was NOT pleased, because they cleaned out his account.)
Yeah, they're out there and ARE getting more and more sophisticated...
It helps when you don't really give a rats ass about the royal baby, or the Kardashians or any other celebrity anywhere around the world.
It also helps to not be stupid. Stupid is supposed to hurt.
Well at least the new Prince the third in line to the throne has a legitimate claim to it, unlike like the Kenyan and the Presidency.
I have to admit that, even though the US has nothing to do with the British monarchy, I find it somewhat neat to be able to point at a particular baby and say that that particular child has a destiny.
Then again, I see so many children on any given night that struggle against such circumstances in life, that to see one child, so very wanted, so very celebrated, so very longed for...it is nice.
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