Paul Walker’s Death Used to Spread Personalized Trojan Horses

It was only a few months ago that Paul Walker that left us in a fiery car accident. These days it is common for spammers and malware writers to use a celebrity’s death to spread malware. In this case, it started with emails with links to a video of Paul Walker’s car on fire, but instead contained a link to a malicious file.

In the latest slew of emails, the sender makes a plea to the victim to find a Dodge Viper GT that was supposedly racing with Paul Walker’s car. The email asks that anyone with information call a number in the email or open the attached file to view a picture of the Viper GT’s driver. In every sample we have dealt with there is always a promise of reimbursement or compensation for helping capture the Viper GT’s driver.

These attacks are unique because of the regular change of subject lines and body text to bypass spam filters. The attacker tries to personalize the email with the recipient’s name in the body, subject, or attached file name.