Beware of the Bad Pitt

I had a nasty encounter with malware a couple of years ago. The fraking thing practically wiped out all the MS word documents in my hard drive by converting them to .exe files. If I remember correctly, it was a case of over-clicking that triggered such onslaught of bad mojo in my pc. I happened to click an unnamed folder in my flash drive (after scanning for viruses, worms and other types of malware of course) and then voila! Worm unleashed. As it was, the worm that infected my hard drive was a fairly new one which explains why it went undetected by my anti-virus application. The damage was significant enough to cause me to reformat my system.

It was quite an irksome and tedious experience I must say. But at least that was the extent of the havoc such malware caused me. There are innumerable types and species of harmful software in the wonderful world that is the internet. Malware generally encompasses any malicious code, including viruses, worms, spyware and Trojans, which are often silently installed on users’ PCs unbeknownst to them. Reasons for planting malware range from promoting a spam product to more insidious objectives such as stealing passwords or financial and personally identifying information. Its effects vary from mild annoyance to downright despair.

Lately, authors of malware have expanded their venue for distribution of such from the usual e-mail and IM services to the more novel idea of planting them with celebrity lures. The big draw for this method is the obvious volume of searches mega celebrities incur within a day. I for one, search a certain baseball player’s name for news at several points of the day. One can only imagine the sheer number of searches Angelina Jolie, Will Smith, Scientoloman Tom Cruise, and other superstars accrue for a single day - millions, easily.

According to the latest findings of McAfee researchers, none other than Mr. Brad Pitt (other half of the Brangelina franchise) has bumped Paris Hilton off the top of the list as the most dangerous celebrity to search for on the Web. The report notes that fans surfing the Web for “Brad Pitt,” “Brad Pitt downloads,” and Brad Pitt wallpaper for items like screen savers and images have an 18 percent chance of becoming infected with online security threats such as spyware, spam, phishing, adware and viruses.

Imagine that. Good thing I’m not a Brad Pitt fangirl then.