Shaun Nichols in San Francisco, V3.co.uk, Saturday 27 June 2009 at 00:54:00

Security experts are warning users to brace for a flood of spam regarding the
deaths of Michael Jackson and Farrah Fawcett.

The US Computer Emergency Response Team (US-CERT) has already received
reports of spam and malicious email attacks exploiting the deaths of actress
Fawcett and pop legend Jackson.

Shortly after news of Jackson’s death broke yesterday, users
flooded
onto the web for more information. The resulting crush of traffic brought
down popular web sites such as Google and Twitter as users rushed to obtain and
share information.

Spammers and malware writers are now also expected to flood the internet with
their own contributions, according to experts.

“Every time a disaster happens or news about some celebrity reaches the
media, malware writers try to take advantage of it,” wrote McAfee researcher
Guilherme Venere
in
a blog posting. “Watch out for spam offering links to ‘news’ or ‘pictures’
of deceased celebrities.”

US-CERT is also advising users to avoid clicking on any links or attachments
contained in unsolicited messages, and to install and maintain updated
anti-virus software.