CNN Spam Now Links to Malware in Article Anchor Text
CNN spam messages are still arriving at a quick pace, and I’ve received a number of them today, most recently about 10 minutes ago. They’ve changed again, and the title of the supposed article in the alert now has a link to the malware. Previously, the article titles linked to a legitimate CNN article describing a threat on the Olympics in Beijing, and only the link titled "FULL STORY" linked to the malware. (See previous post, "CNN Spam Contains Mostly Legitimate Links")
I’m also starting to see links to html files with different names, as others have reported, including cnncurrent.html, cnnhottopics.html, and cnnheadlines.html.
It appears that CNN is paying attention, as someone visiting from CNN’s IP space read my original blog article just a few hours after it was posted. They found my blog by searching Google for "cnnplus.html", one of the filenames used on compromised servers to spread the malware.
A sampling of the some of the articles linked in the spam I’ve received is below. Note that some of them are real events in the news, while others are completely false:
- Bank of America files for bankruptcy, to be taken over by Feds
- Woman Attacked by Beau’s Pitbull
- Top Italian car designer killed. See the video
- Bill Gates: The end of the Windows era is coming
- Two arrested after using barbecue pit as a weapon
- Coup demonstrations in Mauritania
Some other sites with great information about this variety of spam:
Michael Roberts at Vivitek has posted a very detailed list of compromised domains hosting the malware HTML pages.
Spyware Techie has some information about Blogger comments used to spread the spam, as well as a very detailed CNN Spam trojan removal guide for those who have been infected.
Update (11-August): The spam seems to have changed again, as I’m now seeing links in the emails to a file named cnnvid.html.
Update (15-August): I haven’t seen any CNN spam in quite a while, but I’m now seeing lots of MSNBC spam. Perhaps Fox News is next?
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