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Earthquake and Tsunami Searchers Targeted By Malware

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You have probably heard about the Indonesian Earthquake that took place last night, claiming the lives of many. Shameless cybercriminals have not wasted anytime exploiting the disaster targeting people around the world who search for information on the subject.

According to
When users go to these sites, they are presented with fake antivirus scan attempts, which offer to clean users' computers. Of course they do just the opposite.

The subject is really just reflective of a larger phenomenon in which cybercriminals are preying on innocent searchers by targeting topics that are highly searched for. There's nothing more heavily searched for than current events, and there are plenty of tools out there that give away this information. Things like Google's Hot Trends, Yahoo's popular searches, and  Twitter's trending topics are generally good indicators of queries that are being heavily searched for.


Symantec warns users to be "vigilant and cautious" of any search results which appear not to link to trusted sources.

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