Enterprising malware and trojan distributors have targeted the campaign website of Barack Obama.

The system, commonly seen on social networking sites involves setting up a blog/ profile and including what appears to be a YouTube embed. When users click on the embed, instead of playing a video, it takes the users to another site, where they are prompted to download a trojan or malware.

Computerworld and Websense both have details on the scam, although inaccurately claim it is the work of hackers. It’s not the work of hackers though, because no hacking was done, the accounts were set up legitimately, be it possibly through an automated program, but with approval from the site owner (usually given automatically). These tricks are closer to spamming than hacking, and while the threat is real, is unlikely to affect many users either; that would presume large traffic to these sub-pages, and while some of these campaigns target high volume search traffic, most simply don’t. It does highlight issues though in leaving an open door to new user registrations without an ongoing spam prevention program.

Obama’s Website: Malware is coming to America is a post from: The Inquisitr

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.

Obama Victory Inspires New National Lampoon Site, Spam Attacks is a post from: The Inquisitr