Whilst the masses stay vigilant to “love” attacks [1][2][3][4] in the run-up to Valentine’s Day (tomorrow, don’t forget!), others, including McAfee Avert Labs, are wary of further hybrid spam and malware attacks. This morning we received thousands upon thousands of “Google Ad link” samples via our anti-malware and anti-spam automation systems.

A topical social-engineering trick highlights the race to the White House [5] for the Hillary Clintons and Barack Obamas of the world. It’s actually surprising we didn’t see more of this attack yesterday–the week’s anniversary of Super Tuesday [6].

The spam email (example below) contains a link (hidden by HTML [7]) that points to Google’s page-ad service passing another URL–a malicious one–which effectively redirects your browser to a site hosting a protectively detected Downloader.gen.a [8] sample. The site used in this attack is suspected to be linked to the notorious Russian Business Network (RBN) [9].

Other examples of this spam included some of the following subjects:

  • Hillary Clinton Full Video !!!
  • Interesting dvd with Beyonce + 4 asiatic lovers!
  • Interesting dvd with Jennifer Lopez + 5 english boys!
  • Interesting mp3 with Beyonce + 5 portuguese horse!
  • Interesting photo with Mylene Farmer + 6 black stallions!
  • Interesting video with Keira Knightley + 2 black dogs!
  • Keen melody with Christina Aguilera + 4 english boys!
  • Keen photo with Britney Spears + 4 asiatic stallions!
  • Kick-up mp3 with Christina Aguilera + 5 irish mans!
  • New melody with Kylie Minogue + 3 spain dogs!
  • New presentation with Mylene Farmer + 6 portuguese lesbians!
  • Part of presentation with Jessica Parker + 6 black dogs!
  • Shocking photo with Jessica Parker + 3 italian horse!
  • Stunning presentation with Beyonce + 3 black stallions!

We urge you to be vigilant and keep your anti-spam and anti-malware protection up to date. Remember, if it sounds too good to be true, it normally is. ;)

[1] : http://www.publicopiniononline.com/localnews/ci_8249998
[2] : http://blogs.knoxnews.com/knx/silence/archives/2008/02/valentines_day.shtml
[3] : http://www.nbc13.com/gulfcoastwest/vtm/news.apx.-content-articles-VTM-2008-02-13-0006.html
[4] : http://press-releases.techwhack.com/16498/microworld-technologies
[5] : http://www.independent.co.uk/news/in-the-news/race-for-whitehouse
[6] : http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Super_Tuesday
[7] : http://www.avertlabs.com/research/blog/index.php/2007/08/20/the-risks-of-html-formatted-e-mails
[8] : http://vil.nai.com/vil/content/v_142821.htm
[9] : http://www.securecomputing.net.au/news/69637,britney-paris-used-as-hook-in-new-spam-botnet.aspx