Beware botnet-bearing Barack

A wave of emails claiming that Barack Obama is refusing to accept the US Presidency is actually an attack carrying the Waledec botnet, say experts from Marshal8e6.

The emails feature subject lines like “Amazing News” and contain links to fake versions of Obama’s official campaign website.

The fake websites, which reside at domains including “greatobama” and “superobama”, contain links that ostensibly offer more details on the fake news, but actually link to downloadable malware.

Once downloaded, the malware will attempt to infect the user’s PC with the Waledec botnet.

“There is significant public interest in an event as historic and anticipated as this and the spammers are exploiting it,” said Phil Hay, senior threat analyst for the Marshal8e6 TRACE Labs.

But attacks like this are nothing new, as Hay explained: “Spammers have used social engineering ploys like this time and time again to entice spam recipients into clicking on links without thinking.”

Marshal8e6 advises users to avoid clicking on any news items relating to Obama’s inauguration sent to them via email.