Cameron Diaz tops for malware bait

 

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By Reuters

Posted on 20 Aug 2010 at 08:25

Actress Cameron Diaz has topped the list of celebrities being most used by malware criminals as online bait.

Diaz is top of the list of the most dangerous celebrities to search for online, above second-placed Julia Roberts, according to McAfee. Last year's most dangerous web celebrity, Jessica Biel, fell to third.

This relates to a larger trend of using social engineering lures

One in ten websites featuring Diaz contain malicious software, according McAfee.

"This relates to a larger trend of using social engineering lures," said Dave Marcus, director of security research at McAfee Labs. "A lot of times a cyber criminal will mine Twitter, or follow Google Trends, to poison those links. It's very clear they will use news trends to lure."

"They know that people want to have screensavers of popular individuals. They follow hot topics on the web and create their poisonous content accordingly," Marcus said.

Supermodel Gisele Bundchen came in at fourth, followed by Brad Pitt, one of only two men to be listed in the top ten.

"Brad Pitt is historically one of the most dangerous celebrities to search on," said Marcus. "He's always up there."

Former Victoria's Secret model Adriana Lima came in sixth, followed by Jennifer Love-Hewitt and Nicole Kidman, who tied for seventh. Tom Cruise ranked eighth, and Heidi Klum and Penelope Cruz tied for ninth. Anna Paquin rounded out the top ten.

More malware

Marcus said he's seeing the same types of malicious software being distributed, but in higher numbers. "We tracked more malware in the second quarter of 2010 than ever before," Marcus said.

McAfee found six million unique, newly created pieces of malicious programing. "That's about 60,000 pieces per day. It's a big, honkin, onerous number," he said.