Million dollar burnout features as malware lure

Fake robbery footage punts rogue security app

By John Leyden • Get more from this author

Posted in Spam, 22nd September 2008 12:19 GMT

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First it appeared as an art project. Now, over a decade later, it's back from the dead as a malware lure.

In August 1994 musicians Bill Drummond and Jimmy Cauty of the K Foundation burnt a million quid on the Scottish island of Jura as part of an art project, the significance of which has never been properly explained. Fourteen years later malware authors are spamming messages supposedly containing footage of a million dollars going up in smoke.

According to spammed messages, the loot went up in smoke during a failed but pyrotechnically spectacular robbery. In reality, the messages offer nothing more than an archived attachment (called Video.rar) containing a joke program that modifies a screensaver to something resembling the Microsoft Blue Screen of Death and a fake security package that warns of non-existent viral infections.

Screenshots of the email lures and more background on the malware involved can be found in a write-up by Trend Micro here. ®

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