FBI: Beware Haitian Quake Relief Scams
Summary: The FBI issued an alert warning that criminals were setting up charity scams in the wake of the Haiti earthquakes, urging people not to respond to spam donation requests or open emails claiming to show disaster photos and videos, which have been used to distribute viruses and worms. Websense reported criminals were already gaming search engines for Haiti-related terms to push rogue anti-virus products, McAfee shared a list of nearly 200 newly registered Haitian-related domains, and a MasterCard and NameProtect survey after the 2004 tsunami found more than 170 scam sites misdirecting donations.
What's compelling: A prior disaster produced more than 170 fraudulent donation sites, and within days of this one nearly 200 Haitian-related domains had already been registered - a reminder that attackers move on a disaster's news cycle faster than most organizations can update their filters or their people.
Read the original at Krebs on Security ↗
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