Eminem death video leads to malware

The death of a world-famous celebrity is always top news, and it’s regularly exploited by cyber criminals to spread their malicious payloads.

I would venture to guess that fake news of such a death is even more useful. Fans hear the rumor and flock to the Internet, then wade through a myriad of websites confirming or disproving the rumor – and many of these sites are serving malware to the unsuspecting visitors or trying to exploit weaknesses in their system.

The latest in a long line of these fake death news is one that has sprung up only a couple of days ago, and says that the famous rapper Eminem (Marshall Mathers) died in a car crash. Trend Micro warns about an email claiming to come from CBS News “confirming” the rumor and giving a link for the victim to click on in order to view a related video:

The “video” is actually an executable (EminemDead.exe) – a variant of the ZeuS/Zbot information-stealing Trojan.

Users are advised not to follow links or download attachments from unsolicited emails, and to search for relevant news on well-known news sites.