Experts are warning internet users of a trojan disguised as a email message claiming that President Bush and British Prime Minister Tony Blair are conspiring with oil companies to push up prices at the pump.
The Stinx-W trojan has been spammed out to unsuspecting users via email messages, which can have contain subject lines including "Petrol Price Conspiracy," "Campus Student Raped" or "Bush and Blair Conspire."
The email pretends to be from Steve Grey from a fuel price comparison website called petrolprices.com. The content of the email claims that Bush and Blair colluded with oil companies to keep oil prices high. If people click on the attachment, the trojan installs itself.
Graham Cluley, senior technology consultant at Sophos, said launching the file “will not show you any evidence of politicians conspiring with oil companies, but instead open a gaping hole in the security of your PC."
"Hackers are exploiting the public's interest in politics and breaking news to spread malware,” said Cluley. “Anyone unfortunate enough to run this program is running the risk of allowing hackers to gain access to their computer to spy, steal and cause havoc."
In a statement on its website, Petrolprices.com denied any involvement with the email and warned users not to click on links in emails. It said it was extremely easy for hackers to send an email pretending to be someone else.
“They pick an honest website like ours, and then fire out millions of e-mails pretending to be from it. If anyone checks the website, it looks genuine, and the user will be more inclined to open the attachment,” the website said in a statement.
It also published detail of its sender policy framework records on its domain name system, which detail the servers that are permitted to send emails for petrolprices.com.
