Orangeman Burns - Sriram Sridharan's Blog

Hollywood actor Brad Pitt has bumped Paris Hilton off the top of the list as the most dangerous celebrity to search for on the Web, according to McAfee researchers. Altogether, fans surfing the Web for “Brad Pitt,” “Brad Pitt downloads,” and Brad Pitt wallpaper for items like screen savers and images have an 18 percent chance of becoming infected with online security threats such as spyware, spam, phishing, adware and viruses.

I cant believe that there are people in the world who'd fall for such an old stunt. Well, most people avoid it by looking at the file extension. For example, a file calling itself brad_pitt_latest_video.exe would definitely be suspicious, while a file brad_pitt_behind_scenes.avi wouldn't not be. Similar differences between exe's and gifs and exe's and jpgs. :)


What usually happens is that you click on a file called brad_pitt_latest_video.exe and download it. You then execute this file on your PC by double clicking and the malware immediately runs in the background process silently. The only way you can usually notice it is to check the background processes. The file then either logs your keystrokes and steals vital info or surreptitiously downloads more malware into your system causing backdoors to be opened by them. These backdoors serve as an unauthorised peep hole into your system through which hackers can gain acess to your private data. Surprising that so much lies in a single 16Kb exe file right??