Brittany Murphy’s death used for peddling rogue security software

It didn’t take long before cybercriminals seized the opportunity to use the death of actress Brittany Murphy to peddle malware. The most obvious choice was search engine optimization poisoning.

Websense Security Labs reports that when people searched Google for information about her death, they have been given the following topresults:

The matches would lead to malicious domains that tried to convince people their computer is infected and that they should install their software. Of course, it was fake – rogue anti-virus software that does the opposite of what it claims it does.

I’m sure we will be seeing spam with the same subject very soon, so be careful what links you follow. In this case, it’s better to visit well renowned news sites.