Scammers Use Osama Bin Laden's Death To Spread Malware On Facebook, Google

With the news of Osama Bin Laden's death commanding the Web today, it's no surprise that spammers have been exploiting the news for hours. It's pretty much the standard scheme these days; scammers latch onto any big news events in order to get unsuspecting victims to fall for scams.

VentureBeat reports that the Osama malware is already flourishing online. Cloud security firm Zscaler highlights a malicious site that shows a "purported photo of a murdered Osama bin Laden" with a call to download a copy of the VLC video player in order to view video of the video of his death. Of course, this downloads a malicious file called XvidSetup.exe.

Kaspersky's David Jacoby found malware spreading on Google Images already, and stumbled on Facebook pages offering "FREE Subway" and "2 Southwest Plane Tickets" to celebrate Osama's death. The message and malicious link will then spread via the victims' wall.

Symantec told SC Magazine that it expects to see "in excess of 100 million spam emails" related to Bin Laden, and The Daily Mail explains that terms like "Osama Bin Laden Dead," "Al Qaeda" and "Obama Address" are already being targeted by scammers.

As usual, make sure your security software is up to date, and be mindful of where you're reading news and commentary.