Spammers use 'Obama' emails to load trojans && viruses

Online miscreants are riding the coat-tails of US President-elect Barack Obama, with security companies reporting a flood of new Obama-related malware and spam.

The spam messages - which started even before Obama had the chance to give his victory speech - promise new video clips of "amazing" Obama speeches, fresh interviews and election results, but instead users are hit with a virus that will compromise their personal data.

A scan of the virus at Virustotal.com found only 14 out of 36 anti-virus products detected the file as hostile, The Washington Post reported.

Malicious spam attacks are trying to exploit Barack Obama's US presidential win, accounting for about 60% of malicious spam, says security firm Sophos.

A widespread malicious spam campaign claims to offer news of Obama's successful campaign, but it instead links to a website that attempts to infect users with a Trojan horse that steals information for identity fraud.

The emails, which have subject lines such as "Obama win preferred in world poll", and which claim to come from [email protected], have accounted for approximately 60% of all malicious spam seen by SophosLabs in the past 24 hours.

The spam messages contain a link that takes internet users to a webpage which instructs visitors to download "Adobe Flash 9" to view a video of the first African-American president making an "amazing speech".

However, the download will infect computers with a malicious Trojan horse detected by Sophos as Mal/Behav-027.

Sophos experts have determined that the malicious Trojan horse is based on rootkit technology which aids concealment on the victim's computer. Designed to steal information, the malware spies on users' keyboard and mouse inputs, can take screenshots, looks for passwords and submits the information it discovers to a webserver located in Kiev, Ukraine.