Oldest Trick in the Book

Remember the Anna Kournikova virus - that was the one that arrived as an e-mail inviting the recipient (presumably mostly males) to click to see pictures of the famous tennis star? That was back in February 2001.

The latest trick, while on a technology level is totally different, it uses the same old tried and tested social engineering trick to pull the target in.

This one uses MSN. The target gets a chat from what appears to be a "hot girl". They start chatting and very quickly this girl is suggesting the target go take a look at her web site where there's all sorts of interesting things to see.

Unfortunately, the web site is nothing more than a payload delivery mechanism for some sort of malware.

The really clever bit (and you have to give these people some little degree of credit for how easily they socially manipulate people) is that this "hot girl" on MSN is little more than a computer program designed to hoodwink people into visiting the site.

Mind you - it probably doesn't need to be that sophisticated.
MSN: "Hi handsome - what's your name?"
Target: Fred
MSN: "Wanna see some pictures on my web site?"
Target: absolutely