Wiki Attack

I’m surprised this doesn’t happen more often on sites like Wikipedia, or if it does we don’t hear about it.

The page hijacked by the virus creators was about a new variant of the Windows Blaster worm.

Included on the page was a link to a supposed patch that, once downloaded and installed, would protect against this new version. However, anyone installing this on a Windows machine would infect themselves with a virus.

The malicious hackers behind the fake article then sent out a German-language spam e-mail with a message crafted to look like it came from Wikipedia. The message directed people to the booby-trapped page and the fake fix.

By piggy-backing on the good name of Wikipedia the message got past e-mail filters that would otherwise have cleaned it up.