Hackers Exploit Chile Earthquake, Tsunamis to Spread Malware

We could have seen this coming based on past tragedies like the Haiti earthquake last month, but that doesn’t make it any less wrong: hackers are already exploiting the widespread concern over the earthquake in Chile and the threat of tsunamis to infect people’s computers with malware and viruses.

Web security firm Sophos reports that black hat SEOs are already juicing up Chile earthquake search results and either creating infected pages of their own or spreading malware and viruses through unsuspecting third parties. Describing one infected page he found, Chester Wisniewski writes:

…SophosLabs got back to me that this page contains some obfuscated malicious JavaScript that we detect as MAL/ObfJS-R. This script was appended after the normal code on the page.

The code above ultimately redirects your browser to a domain known to SophosLabs as a malware repository. As of this moment, the code does not appear to be dropping malware, although that could change at any time.

When you search for breaking news, be aware that attackers often publish links faster than the legitimate media. Get in the habit of using Yahoo! News, Google News, or another trusted service. Only news published by trusted media sources are aggregated onto these services, unlike a regular search using your favorite search engine.

(Sophos Labs via Slashdot. Image via Tech Journal)