With the death of any person of note, there will inevitably be the morbidly voyeuristic people who want to see pictures of the body or footage of the deceased meeting their maker. It’s too good and opportunity to pass up for the spammers and scammers, so they jump on this wave of interest as a means of spreading malicious software and wreaking havoc upon internet users.
Therefore it is of little surprise that there are already scores of links and pages circulating on Facebook and email purporting to contain images of Osama Bin Laden’s corpse, and the video of the US led raid in Pakistan that killed him. One message claims to link to a photo of the terror leader holding a newspaper to prove he’s still alive. One e-mail, written in Spanish, uploads a Trojan horse virus when a photo link is clicked. And a phony Facebook page asks users to paste a script in their browsers which, in turn, spams their friends with the same link.
David Marcus, head of security research for McAfee Labs goes into more detail about the various scams on his blog, with some useful screen-grabs to show you what to look out for.
Given the amount of secrecy that the actual operation and preparation were shrouded in for the last goodness knows how many months, it’s not too much of a stretch to think that the US Government can keep the lid on a few photographs and some video footage.
So if you see any links or pages of this nature, just give it a miss. Otherwise your hard drive, personal information or social network accounts might go same way as the person you were trying to look at.