Panda Security: Talking with Homer Simpson could cause you an infection
July 2008 by Panda
It all started a few years ago, in an episode of "The Simpsons" -one of the most famous animated sitcoms in TV history- when Homer Simpson gave out his email address: "chunkylover53@aol.com".
Many fans added this address as a contact and the producers of the show thought it would be a good idea if one of them replied to the emails pretending to be Homer Simpson. Time went by, and eventually emails stopped being replied from that address.
Last week, however, several users detected the address was operative again and received a message inviting them to watch an exclusive episode of "The Simpsons". At:
http://www.flickr.com/photos/9696103@N03/2674197704/
However, the address that was active was not the original one. Other accounts were using the Chunkylover53 identifier and passing themselves off as the genuine "Homer Simpson" account.
Upon clicking the link, users were actually downloading a copy of the Turkojan.I Trojan onto their computers.
"Cyber-crooks increasingly improve their social engineering techniques. In this case, the bait was highly attractive: an exclusive episode of "The Simpsons" for fans who had added the contact address provided by one of its characters. Success possibilities were high" explains Luis Corrons, Technical Director of PandaLabs.