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Hackers Using Obama Speech to Commit Fraud

Fake email lures readers into downloading keylogger

November 7, 2008

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Many people who watched President-elect Barack Obama's election victory speech from Chicago's Grant Park Tuesday found it inspiring and uplifting. Unfortunately, some criminals apparently viewed it as a way to hack into thousands of computers.

Within hours of the speech, researchers at the University of Alabama at Birmingham began seeing a spam email inviting recipients to view an online video of the speech.

The spam points to five separate Web site domains, each registered Tuesday in China. Visiting the Web site requires the user to install an "Adobe Flash Player" in order to watch the speech.

However, the program that's downloaded is not an Adobe Flash player. It's actually a "keystroke logger." Installing it will cause all user IDs and passwords, whether for online banking, online stores, email, or even chat programs, to be sent to the criminal's computer.

The subject line of the email includes phases like "a new president, a new congress," "Barack Obama wins," and "Election Night Results," among others. The body of the email is as follows:

Barack Obama Elected 44th President of United States

Barack Obama, unknown to most Americans just four years ago, will become the 44th president and the first African-American president of the United States. Watch His amazing speech at November 5!

Proceed to the election results news page>>

2008 American Government Official Website This site delivers information about current U.S. Foreign policy and about American life and culture.

"We've already seen more than 300 copies of this spam e-mail", said Gary Warner, the Director of Computer Forensics Research at UAB. "We're very concerned that people who missed Tuesday night's speech may follow the link and infect their computer."

Warner's students have identified the criminal's IP address in the Ukraine, as well as the Chinese domain names, and have shared that data with appropriate authorities. Consumers, meanwhile, should delete any emails they receive inviting them to watch a video of the Obama speech.

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