LONDON, July 24 (UPI) -- A British computer security group says hackers are sending e-mails supposedly containing evidence that Osama bin Laden has killed himself.
The e-mails direct users to a website where a file containing photographs of the alleged suicide can be downloaded; in reality, though, downloaders lose control of computers to the hackers, al-Jazeera said Saturday.
"Computer users who fall for the bin Laden hoax may be hit by a Trojan horse," the U.K.-based anti-virus firm Sophos warned Friday, naming the new scheme the Hackarmy Trojan Horse.
"Thousands of messages have been posted onto Internet message boards and usenet newsgroups claiming that journalists from CNN found the al-Qaida leader's hanged body earlier this year," Graham Cluley, senior technology consultant for Sophos, said.
"Hackers and virus writers will try all kinds of tricks to entice people into downloading their malicious code," Cluley said. "It seems this time that the hacker has focused on the public's morbid curiosity and appetite for news on the war against terror."
