US Military Actions Used as Decoy to Spread Malware

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Storm Worm infecting user as they look for information on the tensions in the Middle East.

BitDefender researchers have identified a new wave of spam messages that announcing an alleged attack of the US Army against Iran in order to trick users into downloading and installing malicious software onto their personal computers.

The webpage hosting the piece of malware – dailydotnews.com - is a simple, yet efficiently designed site with a top banner, a simple picture masquerading a YouTube player and three lines of text detailing the US operation in Iran. This spam approach is used on large scale as the spammer relies on a catchy heading and a link to the piece of malware in order to fuel users’ curiosity and trick them into downloading the piece of malware.

“The new spam wave relies on computer users’ curiosity regarding the conflict between the United States and Iran. Users are redirected to a fake news website, where they are shown a larger, inciting description accompanied by a movie player,” said Andra Miloiu, BitDefender Spam Analyst. “However, the alle

ged flash movie is an image depicting a movie player; when clicked, the image gives users a ‘Save image as’ option.”

Upon clicking on either the “movie” or the top banner, the user starts the download process of a binary piece of malware, called “iran_occupation.exe.” The file contains the same malicious code infecting the user with the Storm Worm. The authors have used timing as their advantage, as the recent tensions in the Middle East between the US and Iran have been escalating.

On the social side, the spam wave is targeting the increasingly worried US citizens looking for fresh news on Iran threatening to burn Tel Aviv down in response to possible US attacks on its nuclear facilities.

The BitDefender antivirus is currently filtering and detecting that both the spam message and the malicious code, “iran_occupation.exe” binary, are infected with Trojan.Peed.PM.