Bogus Swine Flu email carries Zeus Trojan

A bogus swine flu email tricks users into downloading malware

A spam email that purports to be from the Centre for Disease Control (CDC) has hit the internet this week spreading the Zbot or Zeus Trojan malware.

The emails contain subject lines such as 'Governmental registration program on the H1N1 virus' or 'Create your personal vaccination profile', in an attempt to capatilise on the public's concern over the disease.

Users are then directed to a web site which displays the CDC logo and invited to download an 'H1N1 Vaccine Profile Archive'. Clicking the download in fact installs a key-logger which can then access personal information.

"The Zeus botnet is making another attempt at stealing personal information this week, starting early in the morning of 1 December," said Jamie Tomasello, abuse operations manager at messaging security company Cloudmark.

"However, most anti-virus vendors have updates that will mark the installer as malware, and one way to protect against it is to make sure that anti-virus software is up to date."

Tomasello added that all the fake CDC URLs were detected as forgeries by the newest versions of Firefox.

Security firm McAfee said in a blog post on Tuesday that the primary countries hosting the fake CDC are Colombia, Brazil, India, Malaysia, Chile and Argentina.

The Zeus malware continues to cause problems for users, and police arrested a man and a woman in Manchester last month for using Zeus to steal bank details.