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Well, it hasn't really, but someone wants you to believe it.
Anti-virus experts at Sophos are warning computer users not to click on links claiming that the British Prime Minister Tony Blair's email account has been hacked. The virus infected email was sent out in the early hours of this morning, during the night of the UK elections, and is specifically targeting British email addresses.
Sophos warns that users who click on the link contained in the email can be infected by not just one, but a series of Trojan horses that aim to steal confidential information from infected PCs, and sensitive online banking account details.
The email arrives with a subject line of "BBC: Tony Blair email account hacked!" and a message body of "Screenshot is here!".
Graham Cluley, senior technology consultant for Sophos said,
"Clicking on the link takes users to a web site which invisibly installs a Trojan horse on the victim's computer. This Trojan horse then attempts to install other malicious code onto the infected computer and install password stealers which can be used by hackers for grabbing sensitive information and bank account details. The computer underground knew that many in Britain would be following the latest political news this morning, and have deliberately created a bogus story about Blair's email account being hacked to lure people into clicking on their malicious link. Everyone should exercise extreme care about how they respond to unsolicited emails, and ensure their anti-virus and anti-spam software is kept up-to-date.
Curiously it appears that the people behind this election night hack attack may have made a small error. It appears that the email messages were supposed to display a photograph of Tony Blair from the BBC web site to lend it credence, but an elementary mistake in their HTML coding has meant only the text of the message is displayed rather than a picture of the Prime Minister."
One of the Trojan horses, Troj/PWSAgent-A, attempts to steal server passwords, Internet Explorer FTP passwords, Outlook account manager passwords, and POP3, HTTP and ISP email addresses.
Other malicious code used in the attack includes Troj/JDownL-A, Troj/Viper-A, Troj/Viperjs-A and the Troj/Dumaru-BE banking Trojan horse.
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