Banking Trojan distributed via fake Formula One star accident 
(24/07/2008)
A new banking Trojan is distributed via a fake news story about a car accident involving Formula One star Fernando Alonso. The fabricated news purports to come from a Spanish daily broadsheet El Pais.
According to the bogus press report Alonso, the two time Formula One champion, was seriously injured in a car accident near the Spanish city of Bilbao yesterday. The story is distributed via spam e-mails with a link to an “amateur recording”, which supposedly depicts the moment of the crash and its spectacular blaze.
The link attached to the story delivers a banking Trojan which targets one of the biggest Spanish banks. Ironically, the bank used to be one of Fernando Alonso’s main team sponsors in previous seasons.
Panda Security has identified the Trojan as Banker-LGC, which bears similarities to a different malware attack from a few weeks ago claiming that the Third World War had begun. The major difference was that the latter tried to install a Gaobot worm instead.
“A banking Trojan wrapped up in a story involving a Formula One star during the peak of the Grand Prix season bears a high probability of success. There are many devoted fans out there whose curiosity might drive them to fall for the trick in a rash moment. This is not the first time we have seen this piece of news used to spread malware and run infected files”, said Dominic Hoskins, Country Manager, Panda Security UK.
Banking Trojans usually target Internet users with emails that appear to come from a banking entity or an online purchase service. They may also be disguised in a message of a sensational nature. Although this malicious activity, commonly referred to as phishing, operates on the fairly basic presumption that users will fall for the trick and have their banking details stolen, it proves to be quite effective in the wake of increasing online reliance for financial services such as online banking or online purchases.
To avoid falling victim to this type of attack, Panda Security advises users not to open any email messages that come from an unknown source or click any links that this may contain.
Related topics: Virus, Worm, Email security, spyware and malware
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