First removal tool for Olympics-related malware launched by Bitdefender

With the Summer Olympic Games going on, nearly four in 10,000 messages are mentioning the event. While some of these messages are trying to push replica products and medicine totally unrelated to the event, some others are trying to plant malware on your PC with fake plane ticket confirmations or to steal your identity with prize award notifications.

If you have already opened an attachment enclosed in these spam emails, chances are that your computer has become ill with the “Olympic fever”. We recommend that you download our free removal tool that detects and eliminates variants of malware spreading through Olympics-related spam and brings your system back to health condition.

One of the most common spam campaigns related to the Olympic Games uses airplane ticket orders as decoy for malware delivery. This message allegedly containing the attached ticket comes bundled with a generic downloader. Once installed, the downloader connects to the Internet and fetches even more malware.

If the e-mail ticket may prompt the user that there is something wrong with an exe file inside an attachment, the Olympic Agenda spam message is a little more subtle: it comes with a PDF document rigged with an exploit (CVE-2010-2883) that crashes Adobe Reader version 9.3 and older and deploys a backdoor service on the computer. The same document has been posted to multiple file-sharing websites in order to attract users looking up information about the Olympics agenda.

A second agenda-themed scam targets Microsoft Office users. The spam message contains a “.doc” attachment that includes malicious code (CVE-2010-3333). Upon opening, the doc file triggers an error in the document processing application, drops a piece of malware from within the document and executes it on the machine.

Social engineering and identity theft are two other ways scammers can ruin your Olympic experience. Before jumping with joy that you just won roughly 3 million British pounds in the Olympic raffle and send the necessary information (especially a photo copy of your ID card), please note that this scam will likely end up in identity theft.

Unfortunately, there are many more scams you may encounter while getting ready for the Olympics, and some of them can’t be prevented by antivirus software. Watch out especially for accommodation scams while travelling to London and check the betting agency twice before placing your bets.