As expected, malware dealers are attempting to capitalise on the results of the US Presidential Election: A spammed news message arrives in email with a link to a web-page that supposedly has a video of the event. Of course it claims to require a special viewer, said to be adobe_flash9.exe (MD5 47c86509a78dc1edb42f2964bea86306) and nags you to download it.

The viewer is not a viewer: It is rather Trojan-PSW:W32/Papras.CL, that hides itself by using a rootkit, steals all your personal details, and uploads them all to a server in Ukraine.

The link in the email takes you to this page: Note the download link for the "viewer".

• Some of the subject lines of the email include:

• USA Election 2008 Results

• Election Center 2008 – Election Results

• Obama’s Win Reshapes the Race

• Election 2008: Time lapse of U.S. counties

• The new President’s cabinet?

• Obama win preferred in world poll

• Can Obama win popular vote but lose election?

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While on the subject of Flash Player, there is a new version of Adobe Flash, version 10.0.12.36 which fixes a bug in previous versions.You should, of course, download it directly from http://get.adobe.com/flashplayer/ rather than from any malware-dealer’s email.