Security Response

Former child star Gary Coleman, who shot to fame on the TV sitcom Diff'rent Strokes, died on May 28, 2010. The American actor is well known not only for his childhood role as Arnold Jackson in Diff'rent Strokes, but also for his small stature as an adult, which was caused by a congenital kidney disease that halted his growth at an early age.

As always, events such as these seem to be prime targets for spammers and malicious code authors alike. Symantec has been monitoring spam samples that tie in to Gary Coleman’s death; in particular, we’ve been observing several health-related spam messages that use the news headlines of Coleman’s death as their Subject lines.

As shown in below example, the message is, in actuality, a promotion of a Canadian pharmacy spam site. The links embedded in the message direct users to this online pharmacy:

In...