D’oh! Homer falls in with the malware crowd

The malware guys have now roped in Homer Simpson system into spreading malware. It appears that going back in time, there was a episode of the ‘Simpsons’ in which Homer’s e-mail address was given as “chunkylover53″. Prior to the episode’s airing, the address was registered by the production company and was then used it to answer hundreds of e-mails from Simpsons fans.

In the past few days ‘chunkylover53’ name has resurfaced, and it’s now being used to distribute a trojan disguised as a Simpsons movie file. If you get an email from Homer and his ‘chunkylover53’ email address you will be invited to follow a link to a special exclusive episode of the show available for download. The link in the message leads to an executable file.

Upon launching the trojan, the user is presented with a fake error message which is followed by several real error messages and, finally, a blank screen. Upon restarting, the system will run noticeable slower and be prone to crashes.

The other nasties in this attack is that once the malware is delivered onto the PC it has remote control software which logs the user in a botnet.  The botnet itself could easily be called on to launch another attack.

What is still unclear and a matter for conjecture is just how the bad guys got a hold of the ‘chunckylover53’ email address.

July 12, 2008 | Filed Under Security, Spam, Uncategorized 

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