'Jobs still alive' spam making rounds in cyberspace

Cybercriminals are again exploiting the death of Apple co-founder and former CEO Steve Jobs, trying to arouse the interest of prospective victims with shock value. According to computer security firm Trend Micro, new spam messages contain the text “Steve Jobs Alive" or “Steve Jobs Not Dead" - and a web link. "All messages come with a link, which when clicked currently redirects users to a blank site. We were unable to continue our analysis at this point. In cases like this, however, a blank page is rarely ever truly blank, and is often a sign that something else is happening in the background, away from the view of the user," Trend Micro said in a blog post. For this particular attack, it said it found reports suggesting that the said site had previously contained a script that loads the BlackHole exploit kit. Trend Micro also noted another Steve Jobs-related spam written in Portuguese, and includes a short text about his death. A rough translation goes...

Subject: Creator of Steve Jobs of Apple’s Mac, iPod and iPad dies Steve Jobs, died of cancer aged 56 The death of Steve Jobs left an orphan of most of his creations, the Apple, a company shaped in accordance with their technological dreams and now faces the challenge of surviving in the absence of its visionary leader. More news portal in direct U.S. in Portuguese

The link would then come after the text of the email, Trend Micro said. "We are currently monitoring all the sites for any further developments. Trend Micro users are already protected from this threat, as the spam messages and the URLs (uniform resource locators) in them are already blocked through the Smart Protection Network," Trend Micro said. Jobs died on Thursday (Manila time), triggering a wave of tributes to the visionary credited for popular consumer electronics such as the Macintosh, iPod, iPhone and iPad.— LBG, GMA News