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| Users are being warned not to click on links
claiming that Tony Blair's email account has been hacked. |
Experts at SophosLabs™, Sophos's global network of virus and
spam analysis centres, have warned computer users to be wary of an
email message that has been sent out in the early hours of Friday
morning, claiming that British Prime Minister Tony Blair's email
account has been hacked. The email message, has been spammed out to
British email addresses during the night of the UK elections, which
saw Blair's Labour party returned to office for a third term.
Sophos warns that users who click on the link contained in the
email can be infected by a series of Trojan horses that aim to
steal confidential information from infected PCs, and sensitive
online banking account details.
The email arrives with the subject line:
BBC: Tony Blair email account
hacked!
and the message body:
BBC: Tony Blair email account
hacked!
Screenshot is here!
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| The email claims that Tony Blair's email account
has been hacked. |
"Clicking on the link takes users to a website which invisibly
installs a Trojan horse on the victim's computer. This Trojan horse
then attempts to install other malicious code onto the infected
computer and install password stealers which can be used by hackers
for grabbing sensitive information and bank account details," said
Graham Cluley,
senior technology consultant for Sophos. "The computer underground
knew that many in Britain would be following the latest political
news this morning, and have deliberately created a bogus story
about Blair's email account being hacked to lure people into
clicking on their malicious link. Everyone should exercise extreme
care about how they respond to unsolicited emails, and ensure their
anti-virus and anti-spam software is kept up-to-date."
One of the Trojan horses, Troj/PWSAgent-A,
attempts to steal INETCOMM server passwords, Microsoft Internet
Explorer FTP passwords, Outlook account manager passwords, and
POP3, HTTP and ISP email addresses. Other malicious code used in
the attack includes Troj/JDownL-A, Troj/Viper-A, Troj/Viperjs-A and the
Troj/Dumaru-BE
banking Trojan horse.
"Curiously it appears that the people behind this election night
hack attack may have made a small error. It appears that the email
messages were supposed to display a photograph of Tony Blair from
the BBC website to lend it credence, but an elementary mistake in
their HTML coding has meant only the text of the message is
displayed rather than a picture of the Prime Minister," continued
Cluley.
Sophos experts have issued anti-virus updates to protect
customers. Sophos PureMessage, Sophos's
consolidated gateway protection against viruses and spam, already
detects the emails as unsolicited spam.
In 2003, a different worm displayed a scathing attack on the
policies of Tony Blair's government and attempted to launch a
denial-of-service attack against the 10 Downing Street website.
More than 100 million users in 150 countries rely on Sophos as the best protection against complex threats and data loss. Sophos is committed to providing security and data protection solutions that are simple to manage, deploy and use and that deliver the industry's lowest total cost of ownership. Sophos offers award-winning encryption, endpoint security, web, email, and network access control solutions backed by SophosLabs - a global network of threat intelligence centers. With more than two decades of experience, Sophos is regarded as a leader in security and data protection by top analyst firms and has received many industry awards.
Sophos is headquartered in Boston, US and Oxford, UK. More information is available at www.sophos.com.