Cybercriminals Using Online Emmy Award Searches to Attack

WHAT/WHY:

Norton is warning consumers searching for the big winners, fashion faux pas and juicy backstage gossip stemming from last night's Emmy Awards that many common search terms have already been "poisoned" by online criminals looking to steal users' personal information.

Cybercriminals monitor newsworthy, trending news topics, then infect dozens of legitimate and fake webpages with viruses, spyware, keylogging programs (where criminals can monitor everything you type) and other malicious software ("Malware") hoping to gain access to people's computers and steal their personal information.

Some common search terms already returning malicious results include:

• "elisabeth moss wiki" - 57 percent of the first 100 results are malicious sites

• "ryan murphy wiki" - 40 percent of the first 100 results are malicious sites

• "emmys 2010 wiki" - 25 percent of the first 100 results are malicious sites

Often within hours of major pop culture events, as many as 50 percent of search results can be "poisoned" – meaning that it's just as likely that you will click on a bad link as a good one!

And this doesn't just mean that you'll get hit by a flood of annoying pop-ups. These crooks don't want you to know they're in your computer, so they can steal as much personal information (contacts, passwords, banking information) as possible before you catch on. Many victims won't know they've been hit until it's too late!

EXPERTS/TIPS:

Security experts are on hand to share tips with users on how they can protect themselves from these kinds of scams, including:

• Secret dressing room spy-cams? The truth about celebrities' jealous rages? Don't believe everything you read – Cybercriminals use sensational headlines to get you to click on their poisoned links. Delete e-mails and ignore search results from people and sites you don't know – no matter what they're promising.

• Hollywood's not the only place you can't always trust your friends - Don't assume links and videos posted by friends on social networking sites are safe. Use a free tool such as Norton Safe Web for Facebook to scan your wall and your friends' walls for bogus links.

• Take some "Glee" in telling those crooks to get "Lost" - Use a safe search tool, like the free Norton Safe Web Lite, which can identify poisoned search results before you click on them.  

WHEN:

Interviews with security experts available upon request

IMAGES:

Screenshots of top poisoned search results are available upon request

CONTACT:

Gerritt Hoekman

Edelman for Norton

323-202-1895

[email protected]