Computer science and criminal justice students at the University of Alabama at Birmingham have uncovered a series of fraudulent e-mails that claim to link to video of Sen. Barack Obama's acceptance speech, but could put a visitor's personal information in the hands of criminals.According to Gary Warner, UAB's director of research in computer forensics, the spam links to Web sites registered Tuesday in China.
Visiting the Web site requires the user to install an "Adobe Flash Player" to watch the speech. Installing it will cause all user IDs and passwords, whether for online banking, online stores, e-mail, or even chat programs, to be sent to the criminal's computer.
"We've already seen more than 300 copies of this spam e-mail", says Warner, "and we're very concerned that people who missed Tuesday night's speech may follow the link and infect their computer."
Warner's students have determined that the person behind the scam is operating out of the Ukraine, and uses Chinese domain names. The students "have shared that data with appropriate authorities."
More details are available on Warner's blog -- CyberCrime & Doing Time.