Someone’s spamming Australian email addresses with a fake news bulletin about PM John Howard having had a heart attack. It includes a link supposedly to The Australian newspaper, but which in fact goes to http://www.theau-news.org/ The spams come from a variety of addresses, with subject lines such as “John Howard, the current Prime Minister of Australia have survived a heart attack” and “Best surgeons are struggling for the life of the Prime Minister”.
The domain was registered only a few days ago, to a post-office box in Nova Scotia, Canada, and apparently the site tries to install malware.
SYDNEY, February 18, 2007 08:56pm (AEDT) – The Prime Minister of Australia, John Howard have survived a heart attack. Mr Howard, 67 years old, was at Kirribilli House in Sydney, his prime residence, when he was suddenly stricken. Mr Howard was taken to the Royal North Shore Hospital where the best surgeons of Australia are struggling for his life.
Click on the link below to get the latest information on the health of the Prime Minister:
The Australian – keeping the nation informed
John Howard was born on the 26th of July, 1939. Howard is Australia’s second longest serving Prime Minister and leader of the Liberal Party in Australia.Howard was born at, a suburb of Sydney Australia. He attended Earlwood Primary School and then Canterbury Boys’ High School. Howard graduated from the University of Sydney with a bachelor of Laws and in 1961.
Prime Minister John Howard was sworn Australian PM in 1996 and has subsequently won the next 3 elections, being in 1998, 2001 and 2004. He is considered a conservative politician and has described himself as “the most conservative leader the Liberals have ever had”.
Prime Minister Howard was a strong supporter of the war with Iraq and has been criticized for blindly following the lead of the United States president George W Bush. Australian troops entered Iraq with the United States and British lead force. This became an unpopular decision for Howard, particularly after no weapons of mass destruction was found in Iraq (the main reason for starting a war with Iraq and ousting the leader Suddam Husein).
John Howard and his wife Janette have three children together; Melanie, Tim and Richard Howard.
I received it. Given I had just finished reading the newspaper online and there was no mention of any PM with heart trouble, I just deleted without reading it. I don’t think the subject line actually mentioned Australia or Howard.
I’ve had a look into this, and you look safe from this virus if (a) You don’t use Windows, or (b) you don’t use Internet Explorer, or (c) you have Scripting (VBScript) turned off.
I clicked the Link……how do i remove this virus????
AusCERT has some details on it. Unfortunately it says the only way to guarantee recovery is a full format and re-installation; though from the looks of it some anti-virus vendors do have fixes. So probably start with a full system scan with your AV software and see what it says.