Monday, July 22, 2013

Royal Baby video!

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.
hate crime victim
Hate crime victim Bob Fnork (center) is stunned to discover he has just opened another infected attachment.

"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:

Dave H said...

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.)

Old NFO said...

Yeah, they're out there and ARE getting more and more sophisticated...

Anonymous said...

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.

Anonymous said...

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.

pediem said...

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.