Steve Jobs' Death Saddens World, Inspires Spammers

Steve Jobs spamIt was one of those odd moments where the entire online community was briefly unified in its mourning of the tech visionary, Apple co-founder, and former CEO whose life-work has demanded nearly universal respect. But as with everything else on the Internet, it didn’t last long. The dregs of the Web showed up in short-order to exploit the death of Steve Jobs, who died of cancer last night at the age of 56.

Within minutes of the news of Jobs' death, announced by Apple on Wednesday evening, Twitter and other social networks exploded with an outpouring of grief and condolences. It took just hours before the first scams exploiting the Apple founder and former CEO's death began circulating. Among them:

Kaspersky Lab researcher, Dimitri Best, posted a Twitpic this morning of what seems to be the most widespread Steve Jobs scam floating around at the moment. The scam-site, SteveJobsFuneral.com, purports to offer links to photos and videos of Jobs’ funeral, which hasn’t even occurred yet, as well as links to Apple product pages. It also entices web-surfers with a chance to win one of 15 free Macbook Pros if they provide their email address. According to a post by F-Secure, this particular site was registered on September 20, and contains affiliate advertising info that will bring revenue to the sites creators for any purchases made through the link.

Sophos’ Graham Cluley details a Facebook scam claiming that Apple is giving away 50 free iPads in memory of Steve Jobs. Of course it isn’t true, by following this link and others like it you are helping affiliate advertising companies make money. You may be prompted to take a survey, enter some sort of contest, or, in the worst cases, you may be infecting your computer with malware.

There was no shortage of Twitter based scams as well, many offering links to Jobs memorial sites that were serving malicious links.

This isn’t the first time that scammers have jumped on a huge story to make a quick buck. It happened after Osama bin Laden was killed, it happened in the wake of the Japanese earthquake and tsunami disasters, it happened after Casey Anthony’s acquittal, it happened when both Amy Winehouse and Elizabeth Taylor died. These sorts of scams pre-date the Internet and they aren’t going anywhere. If there is easy money to be made, no matter how lowly the process, someone’s going to make that profit. The important thing is that you are smart. Stick to trusted sites and news sources, of which SteveJobsFuneral.com and too-good-to-be-true social media offers are not included.

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Steve Jobs death exploited by Facebook scammers

It's impossible to express how sad many people in the technology world feel at the news of the death of Steve Jobs.

Sickeningly, as with the deaths of other figures in the public eye, there are scammers waiting to take advantage of bad news.

Here's a scam we have seen on Facebook, claiming that free iPads are being given away "in memory of Steve Jobs".

In memory of Steve, a company is giving out 50 ipads tonight. R.I.P. Steve Jobs [LINK]

The cool-sounding link sucks you in, tricking you into believing that you may get a free iPad but then goes on to get you to complete online surveys to "qualify".

The link goes through the bit.ly short url service (we have asked our friends at bit.ly to shut the link down) and we can see that over 15,000 people have already clicked on the link which was set up within hours of Steve Jobs's death first being announced.



Of course, if you were one of those people who clicked on the link you may be wondering what the chances are that you will receive a free iPad. I hate to disappoint you, but it's pretty unlikely.

The webpage you are taken to is very similar to ones we have seen pointed to by other scammers. Here's what I saw:



I am writing this article from the Virus Bulletin conference in Barcelona, and you can see that the page has automagically determined where I am in the world and adjusted its language and wording as appropriate.

Below you'll see how the survey pages look if you visit them from Sydney, Australia, for instance.


If you don't click through within a few seconds, it plays an audio message urging you to do so:

You'll notice that the audio message spectacularly fails to mention the 50 free iPads, which have by this time been reduced to the promise of "an exclusive reward", whatever that might be.

My colleague Paul Ducklin captured the audio and - being a fountain of interesting but not always entirely relevant information - tells me that the speaker is an Australian who grew up in South Africa.

When Duck visited the page a second time from Sydney, this is what he saw:

How do the scammers make money? Well, they are earning affiliate cash - in a nutshell, they make more money the more traffic they can direct to websites, driving more people to become customers, or take online surveys and competitions.

Cynically, they exploited the death of Steve Jobs in the hope of driving large numbers of internet users to websites offering content such as contests, surveys and online gambling. The fact is, of course, that they could just as easily have taken those users to a webpage containing malicious code or a phishing page designed to steal credentials.

Chances are that this won't be the only scam we see regarding the untimely death of Steve Jobs. It wouldn't be a surprise, for instance, to see scams which might try to take advantage of those moved by the loss of Apple's founder with lures like "Donate to Steve's favourite charities as a tribute".

If you do want to pay tribute to Steve Jobs, the most appropriate place it seems to me would be Apple's website itself.

The truth is that the scammers are not geniuses like Jobs, and they don't contribute anything to the world of technology or wider society as Steve Jobs did. It's a shame that they can't be inspired by speeches like the one Jobs gave at Stanford University in 2005, and make something better of their lives.

I think that's how we should remember Steve Jobs today.

Please folks - always think carefully about the links that you click on. Time and time again scammers and cybercriminals have proven themselves to have no qualms about exploiting news stories - whether it be the personal tragedy of a teenage girl committing suicide, bizarre escapades, a natural disaster or the latest salacious celebrity gossip.

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Cybercriminals Remember Steve Jobs Through Facebook Scam

In an inevitable turn of events, cybercriminals were found leveraging the death of Apple co-founder Steve Jobs through Facebook scams within hours after it was announced.

The particular scam we found involves a website which claims that Apple has decided to give away 1000 iPads, in memory of Steve Jobs. The said site displays the following:

The site asks users to share the page in order to be eligible. After the user follows the instructions, he is directed to an ad site, while in the background, the link is posted on their Facebook wall.


And as dubious as the offer sounds, it seems like some users are falling for the scheme, as we are seeing an increasing number of posts bearing the website’s URL.

The catch behind this scam is that there is no such offer from Apple, and that only ones who will get anything from this are the scammers, who will earn money from the displayed ads every time a user is tricked into following the instructions. Also, as more users share the link, the number of potential victims also increases, as well as the profit for the scammers behind it.

The death of known persons have become staple topics of social engineering schemes for the past years. Just a couple of months ago we saw scams that took advantage of the death of singer Amy Winehouse, as well as rumors about the death of Lady Gaga.

Users are advised not to click on posts like these if they see them on their Facebook newsfeeds. We also suggest users to educate those who have been tricked to stop the spreading of such scams.

For more information on threats leveraging social networking sites, check our infographic, The Geography of Social Media Threats.

Access to the mentioned website is now blocked through the Web Reputation Service. Users of the latest Trend Micro™ Titanium™ Maximum Security are also protected from this through the Social Networking Security feature.

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Steve Jobs Dead At 56

Outpourings of grief came from all corners of the technology world on Wednesday after Apple Computer announced that its co-founder and former CEO Steve Jobs had died of cancer at the age of 56.

Apple's Web page paid tribute to Jobs on Wednesday, as tributes poured in from across the world. Of note: Bill Gates, Chairman and former CEO of Microsoft - and Jobs longtime rival - issued a statement expressing his condolences to Jobs family and friends.

 
Steve Jobs Dead at 56: Apple Tribute Page

"Steve and I first met nearly 30 years ago, and have been colleagues, competitors and friends over the course of more than half our lives. The world rarely sees someone who has had the profound impact Steve has had, the effects of which will be felt for many generations to come," Gates wrote.

Sergey Brin, cofounder of Google, expressed condolences on behalf of Google. "From the earliest days of Google, whenever Larry and I sought inspiration for vision and leadership, we needed to look no farther than Cupertino. Steve, your passion for excellence is felt by anyone who has ever touched an Apple product (including the macbook I am writing this on right now). And I have witnessed it in person the few times we have met," he wrote.

Jobs, who has been battling cancer since 2003, stepped down as CEO in August, citing the difficulty of continuing in that position as he struggled with illness. Read More...