New Britney naked video scam

Emails promising a video of a naked Britney Spears are the latest attempt by hackers to get computer users to install malicious code on to their PCs.

Messages circulated at the weekend claim to offer a “New Britney naked video” and ask you to ‘Check zip file in attachment’, experts at SophosLabs have warned.

But the attachment actually contains a Trojan horse called Troj/PushDo-Gen which targets Microsoft Windows. When members of the Troj/Pushdo-Gen family are installed they drop and run a further file in memory, usually detected as Troj/Pushu-Gen or Mal/Basine-C.

This will usually then drop further files, which are used to provide stealthing for the Trojan. The dropped file in memory will also usually attempt to inject further code into Internet Explorer.

Emails claiming to show you celebrities in a state of undress are nothing new, but appear to be an effective way to fool many people into running code designed to allow hackers to break into computers. Nicole Kidman, Angelina Jolie and Natalie Portman have all previously been used as bait.

"There seems to be an endless stream of spam and malware offering pictures of the troubled pop star in various states of undress. Does anyone fall for this? Judging from the number of times the same theme is used, the answer is probably Yes," wrote Mark Harris, director of SophosLabs, in the SophosLabs blog.

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