Steer yourself out of trouble..
Warnings have been circulated today regarding a banking Trojan virus purporting to be a news story about former Formula One World Champion Fernando Alonso.
The Trojan virus, disguised as a fabricated news article giving details of a supposed motorway accident involving Spaniard Alonso just outside Bilbao, carries the El Pais newspaper livery. Opening the link attached to this news story unleashes a banking Trojan which, when installed on your computer, will be ready to steal financial details when you log-in to your bank account or make online purchases.
The link promises you an ‘amateur recording’ of the non-existent crash and ensuing blaze, in which Alonso is reported to have perished. Opening this link will only result in the Trojan being speedily downloaded however.
Should you receive an email carrying this information, or see this news item advertised online, please don’t click on the link. It’s a phishing scam.
Unfortunately for Lewis Hamilton, Fernando Alonso is very much alive, well, and preparing for the Hungarian Grand Prix next weekend.
Effective, but not terribly practical….
I’m no Girls Aloud expert, all I know is there are five female members (Cheryl Cole nee Tweedy, Nadine Coyle, Sarah Harding, Nicola Roberts and Kimberly Walsh), they’ve had 18 consecutive top ten hits, and they were the last act to officially feature on the now defunct Top of the Pops. That’s all I know. Oh, and ‘Biology’ peaked at a lowly 26 on the Australian charts. That’s really the extent of my knowledge.
However, I do know a Trojan virus when I see one, so this is just a quick note to say be on your guard.
According to systems security experts McAfee, almost 500,000 people have been caught out over the last few days by a booby trapped media file.
The file, which poses as a music track, short video or movie, has been sitting on a number of peer to peer applications, including eDonkey and Limewire. The little rogue has a number of different titles, including ‘girls aloud st trinnians.mp3’, which (as someone who isn’t the least bit interested in Girls Aloud) I obviously wouldn’t be trying to download (*cough*).
However, I might have gone for one of the others. The full list of filenames and aliases this infected file goes under are:
girls aloud st trinnians.mp3
changing times earth wind .mp3
heartbroken fast t2 ft jodie.mp3
meet bambi in kings harem.mp3
paralyized by you.mp3
pull over levert.mp3
If you download one of these files and run the fake codec expecting to hear a song, a bundle of adware and pop-ups will plague you instead, rendering your computer unusable.
So please be careful when you’re file-sharing today. Visit Broadband Choices for tips on how to stay safe online and beef up your firewall. You may also want to take a look at our guide to downloading.
Now, did I mention Nadine Coyle stands at 5’5” in her bare feet?
