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Tiger Woods Car Accident Heating Up the Web

Created: 28 Nov 2009 12:15:34 GMT
Hon Lau's picture
Hon Lau Symantec Employee
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The car accident involving Tiger Woods last night outside his home in Windemere, Florida has been generating a lot of heat as far as Web traffic and searches go. Since the news broke, the top web searches on Google has been related to the this story. Even hours after the break of the story, six out of the top ten search items are still related to this event.  Tiger Woods is obviously a huge celebrity from a sport that has a huge worldwide following. The circumstances surrounding this accident are still as yet unclear.   

Search rankings for results relating to Tiger Woods

From an IT security point of view this unfortunate incident is just another fruit ripe for the picking as far as malware writers are concerned. So it comes as no surprise that the creators of rogue antivirus or misleading application software have already jumped on the bandwagon and attempted to poison web search engine results to take advantage of this spike in web search activity.

We have observed some search engine results redirecting to a few malicious domains which are:

  • vir-curemypc-now.com
  • egafuki.cn
  • online-scanner-free.net
The sites go through the usual fake scanning activity before pointing out a whole host of serious errors and threats that needs to be cleaned from your computer. For a video of how these misleading applications generally behave you can view this video made by my colleague Benjamin Nahorney.

Fake AV scans

The files on offer on this occasion may be one of the following:
 
As you already know, taking advantage of celebrity mishaps, major news events or disasters is nothing new. We have seen this kind of activity before in relation to Serena Williams, Farah Fawcett, Michael Jackson, Tsunamis, the list is endless. So this is just another reminder that we always have to be on our guard. When searching for information on the Web, make sure your legitimate antivirus software is updated and if you are ever feel yourself being strong-armed into buying antivirus software from any dubious online sources-Don't do it! Instead go to a trusted source such as your local physical shop.
 
And if you are interested in the real news, try one of these sources:
• Reuters
• CNN
• BBC
 
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