Hackers look to use Serena Williams' tirade for attacks

2009-09-15

It appears that hackers are yet again taking advantage of current events to spread malware, this time looking to Serena Williams' outburst at the US Open for their launch-pad.

Some websites have been found to lead to a fake anti-virus scan and Symantec named pixnat.com as one of the offending addresses, which may concern those firms seeking to avoid a data breach.

According to the organisation, once the malicious URL is visited, a fake anti-virus scan window pops up, reporting that a number of threats have emerged.

Users are offered the option of downloading an application to fix the issue, but Symantec has identified it as corrupt, adding a detection for it as a Trojan horse.

The organisation advised that it is best to go to the official source when hunting down such stories as Ms Williams' tirade.

In a blog for Sophos, Graham Cluley has warned that hackers will likely jump on Kanye West's raid on the MTV Video Music Awards stage to interrupt Taylor Swift's acceptance speech.

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