Symantec Intelligence Report around the 2012 Olympic Games

July 2012 Symantec Intelligence Report around the 2012 Olympic Games.

The July Symantec Intelligence Report has uncovered how attackers are using Olympic-themed hashtags on Twitter to spread malicious code, bundling threats with popular Olympic-themed Android apps, and creating spam and phishing scams that pretend to be contests sponsored by credit card companies.

There have also been a few instances of spammers attempting to trick the public into downloading malware. For example, one spam email Symantec has seen hints at a doping scandal, and includes a link to a website that mimics YouTube. Instead of playing the video the website tells the user to install a new version of Flash Player (see image below).

If the user clicks ‘OK’ they will infect the computer with a Trojan, which contains a large list of malicious domains, attempting to download further malware, thus opening the computer to a variety of threats

Similar sporting-themed attacks took place during the 2008 Olympics in Beijing and during the 2010 FIFA World Cup in South Africa, so this is not a new phenomenon, but the social engineering employed in many of these attacks may be unfamiliar to a new audience.

July 2012 Symantec Intelligence Report highlights

• Spam – 67.6 percent (an increase of 0.8 percentage points since June)
• Phishing – One in 475.3 emails identified as phishing (a decrease of 0.003 percentage points since June)
• Malware – One in 340.9 emails contained malware (a decrease of 0.023 percentage points since June)
• Malicious websites – 2,189 websites blocked per day (an increase of 4.0 percent since June)
• Olympic-related scams and threats to keep an eye on
The July 2012 Symantec Intelligence Report can be found here.

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