Be careful what advertisements you click on over the Internet.

The following excerpt from the Birmingham Post explains...

Tier-3, the behavioral analysis IT security specialist, says reports recruitment sites are being used by hackers to infect users with malware reflect the increasingly devious approach hackers are taking.

“MessageLabs have discovered hackers are exploiting the credit crunch, and the fact many senior people’s careers are stagnating.

They are luring people with the promise of jobs but all users end up with is an infected PC or worse,” said Geoff Sweeney, Tier-3’s chief technical officer.

According to Mr Sweeney, the IT security vendors’ research uncovered a legitimate ad on a large Australian recruitment website that is being referenced by an RTF (rich text format) letter with an embedded Adobe PDF file.

“Internet users think the email and its associated RTF file are genuine, but they end up infecting PCs with a Trojan that opens their machines up to remote hackers,” he said.

“Problems start when users click through on the PDF and wait for their screen to update. This, of course, doesn’t happen, the machine is being infected in the background,” added.

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