Clinton, Obama and McCain peddling Viagra online?

As the U.S. primaries continue to heat up, spammers lose no time in exploiting the names of party front runners to lure victims into clicking on unsolicited ads, malicious links and porn videos, says a recent spam report.
3/7/2008 9:00:00 AM By: Nestor E. Arellano

Spammers are exploiting the buzz generated by U.S. presidential primaries as a new tactic to attract computer users that might be itching for their "campaign fix", according to a recent report from security software firm Symantec Corp.

The new spam campaign has made unwilling sales representatives of Democrat rivals Clinton, Barak Obama, Republican stalwart John McCain, according to the monthly The State of Spam report from Symantec Corp.

The candidates' names are being used to dupe people into giving up personal information, buy drugs such as Viagra or get involve in pump-an-dump stock schemes, the report said.

"Spammers, it seems are getting a lot smarter and turning to issues or individuals tied to current events," said Doug Bowers, senior director of anti-spam engineering at Symantec.

In February, spammers circulated a bogus link to Clinton videos cloaking a malicious Trojan. URLs containing the former first lady's name have also been used in porn and Viagra spam, said the report

Consider the following e-mail subject headings using Clinton's name as bait:

Subject: Hilary Clinton's campaign yesterday struggled to convince Democrats she can deliver strong wins.

Subject: Hilary Clinton stood up for daughter!!!

Spammers, in this case, have cleverly taken the election mania and gossip angles to make sure that all bases are covered.

Symantec said the messages link to a suspect file, "mpg.exe." which is a Trojan downloader. Once the Trojan is installed in a victim's machine, it works at the kernel level to send spam.

Another message tracked by Symantec has the subject heading: Obama said that…

The e-mail is actually linked to a page for a work-from-home get rich scheme.

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