Conflict in Gaza inspires new CNN campaign from malware authors

The military campaign from Israël in Gaza has inspired malware distributors. The outbreak appears to be sent from CNN Media Centre (cnn@cnn.com) – obviously spoofed – with subject lines such as:

israel’s war on hamas: a dozen thoughts
hamas goads israel into war
israel vows war on hamas in gaza
hamas launching rocket war after gaza evacuation

The body of the email contains:

Israel offers short respite from strikes.
Israel will halt its bombardment of Gaza for three hours  every day to allow residents of the Hamas-ruled Palestinian territory to obtain much-needed supplies, a military spokesman says.
The images broadcast here where graphic and striking.
The Al Jazeera English report below captures the extent of the devastation caused by the initial strikes.

Proceed to view details:

hxxp://edition.cnn.2009.completeserv.*****-******.israelgazaconflict.com/israel-gaza.htm?/****

2009 Cable News Network. A Time Warner Company. All Rights Reserved.

The included URL will lead  visitors to a web site that looks like the CNN site. Download screens promts appear, to update your Adobe Acrobat or Flash player software,  when you click on a link to view the video. Getting out of the loop can only done by closing your browser session. If the download is accepted, a Trojan is installed which opens communication for the download of further malware from a remote location.

A similar campaign has been done in the past with the CNN Daily top 10 and the CNN Alerts. These previous campaigns caused several new infections because the receivers of these emails thought this was a legit email because of the CNN look-and-feel that was used to mislead readers.

The current campaign isn’t having a CNN branding at the moment so it should look supsicious right away to anyone. Be carefull.

CNN’s Behind the Scenes blog warns their readers not to download any software pertaining to the Gaza conflict.