Obama Victory Inspires New National Lampoon Site, Spam Attacks
Barack Obama’s victory this week is inspiring a wave of new Internet activity, both business-oriented and malware-driven.
Online Laughs
On the productive side, National Lampoon — the company behind “Animal House” and the other classic movies — has bought the Web site BarackObamaJokes.com and is adding it into its arsenal of comedy sites. National Lampoon isn’t saying how much it paid for the domain and content.
The company describes its vision for BarackObamaJokes.com as being a blog-type of setup that will focus on “aggregating political jokes and videos” about Obama and politics in general. It also indicated more site acquisitions are likely to follow in the coming months. “We are always on the lookout for funny, compelling, and entertaining sites and content,” CEO Daniel Laikin says.
Online Attacks
On the darker end of the spectrum, two separate security firms are reporting a sudden jump in Obama-related malware following Tuesday night’s win. Sophos goes as far as to say 60 percent of the e-mailed viruses coming into its labs today had something to do with Obama’s name or image.
Most of the messages appear to be standard spam types of attacks, presenting realistic-looking links to Obama information or videos that end up installing Trojans on your system. It’s no surprise — certainly these types of attacks pop up with names of people in the news at any given time — but it’s a warning worth passing on, particularly to family who might be less computer-savvy and more apt to fall into the trap.
