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Cyber crims taking advantage of Boston bombing

by on19 April 2013

Scum squatting, spamming and soliciting donations

Cyber criminals are known for their habit of piggybacking big news stories and coming up with ways to exploit just about every situation, no matter how distasteful. It their latest despicable scheme some of them are preying on people willing to help out the victims of the Boston Marathon bombings.

According to a recent Cisco report, fraudsters launched massive spam campaigns to take advantage of the tragedy mere hours after the bombs went off. Information Week reports that “opportunists” registered 125 suspicious domain names on Monday and the number hit 234 by Tuesday.

Some are just cyber squatting, while others are already soliciting donations. There are a few fake twitter accounts in the mix as well. One of the spam campaigns involved sending out emails with a CNN header, with subject lines that appear like legit news stories. They are anything but – they contain links to malware sites, reports Business Insider.

Security experts are warning people that emails with bombastic news headlines probably aren’t news, they are click bait served up by cyber criminals and users should exercise caution.

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