Spam offers to let people use their PC to attack Obama site

By Elinor Mills, CNET News.com
Wednesday, August 19, 2009 10:33 AM

Spammers are hoping to rouse Obama critics to launch a cyber protest and to download malware onto their PCs in the process.

New spam is circulating that supposedly offers a way for people to use their computers to launch a denial-of-service attack on the Web site of President Obama, researchers said on Tuesday.

The e-mail message says: "If You dont like Obama come here, you can help to ddos his site with your installs."

The e-mail then provides a link to a Web site where visitors are offered money for installing the supposed denial-of-service (DoS) software, according to a blog posting on the site of e-mail security provider Proofpoint.

The spam site also tells visitors to come back and get updated versions of the purported denial of service software if their antivirus program is detecting it as malware and disabling it.

It's not clear whether the software does turn the computer into a DoS attacking zombie, or what it does, if anything. But it would be crazy to expose your computer like that, regardless of your political leanings.

This article was first published as a blog post on CNET News.


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