Hurricane Katrina brings out the best and the worst

It seems that any widely reported disaster brings out the scammers and focuses their efforts on using the news to their benefit. Hurricane Katrina is no different. SANS.ORG is reporting many different scams but one in particular that uses your curiosity to get you to link to a site that then infects your computer.
-------------------- from SANS.ORG diary isc.sans.org

The text of the email (the original is in HTML):

Subject: Re: u1 Katrina killed as many as 80 people.

Just before daybreak Tuesday, Katrina, now a tropica
l storm, was 35 miles
northeast of Tupelo, Miss., moving north-northeast with
winds of 50 mph.
Forecasters at the National Hurricane Center said the amou
nt of rainfall
has been adjusted downward Monday.


Mississippi Gov. Haley Barbour said Tuesday that Hur
ricane Katrina killed
as many as 80 people in his state and burst levees in
Louisiana flooded New
Orleans.


Read More..

'Read More..' links to XnextermestX.com [DO NOT VISIT! MALWARE!]. We are currently analyzing this page. It uses obfuscated javascript to download what looks like a .hta exploit.

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If you subscribe to a news service that e-mails you stories - check that they are in fact from where you expect them. Better yet, stop getting them via e-mail as most such agencies now support the new RSS (RDF Site Summary or Rich Site Summary) facility which you can use news/e-mail browsers such as Thunderbird to view at liesure.

If you want more news - watch CNN, that's what I'm doing :)

If you want to dontate - check out the FEMA site or donate to the Red Cross or via an agency you have dealt with in the past and trust.

Disasters like this bring out the best in many, but the worst in some. We all need to do a bit of introspection about how we would deal with such a disaster close to us and our loved ones.

The main thing is - don't let the worst of them colour your judgement about the rest - they need your help, and would help you in similar circumstances.

richard