Hackers hide behind Olympics

CIO's beware. The latest security threat may be coming: emails using the Olympics as a cover to hide malicious Trojans that elude most antivirus programs. These email attacks mostly originate from Asia, in some cases claiming to be to be from the International Olympic Committee, and are highly destructive. Security experts at MessageLabs, a company that scans email messages for hostile content and provides Web security, have found more than a dozen Olympic-themed attacks over the past six months. They have targeted different industries with Trojan attachments that could allow the attacker to conduct corporate espionage.

Mark Sunner, chief security analyst at MessageLabs, said the attacks have shifted from Microsoft Word documents to new types of Microsoft files where the intrusions are much less likely to be detected by traditional antivirus engines. "The emerging targeted attacks are more unseen" and antivirus programs are likely to be insufficient, he said.

For more on hackers masquerading behind Olympics:
- See this CIO Today article