Messages are being sent from the addresses like news@bbc.com, news@cnn.com, election@usatoday.com, etc..  and the identified subject lines are “Barack Obama Wins”, “Election Night Results”, and “Fear of a Black President”.

As you open the e-mail the body of the e-mail tells you a little about Obama and his speeches and a link which promises you to show some really important speeches from the past, election moments and interviews of Obama. Once you click on the link it takes you to a news-like page and asks you to download the latest flash player to view the video, in this case “adobe_flash9.exe”.

Once you download and install the file the computer security is compromised and the important information on the computer is vulnerable.

Following is one of the example e-mails flowing around..

Barack Obama Elected 44th President of United States

Barack Obama, unknown to most Americans just four years ago, will become the 44th president and the first African-American president of the United States.

Watch His amazing speech at November 5!

Proceed to the election results news page>>

2008 American Government Official Website

This site delivers information about current U.S. Foreign policy and about American life and culture.

This is being seen as a high level attack from the spammers as the volumes are very high. MxLogic, a security company, reported that close to 1 million e-mails were received and blocked within two hours. Other security companies reported similar numbers.

Volumes of such messages is continuing to go up with the time. So next time you see a Barak Obama e-mail with nice pictures and a link to a never seen before video, be sure of what you are doing.

Following is the picture of the page that suggests you to download the fake latest flash player.

[Image credits: Mxlogic]

I have been holding this post for an hour now, because I have been trying to install the trial version. I am impressed with the fact that it actually took only 2 minutes to install this application. Let’s see what Symantec has to say about the features this new Internet Security Suit has:

• NEW! Proven fastest security suite available—Spend more time using your computer and less time waiting for your security software to perform.
• Pulse updates for up-to-the-minute protection—Delivered every 5 to 15 minutes to detect and eliminate new threats
• Intelligence-driven for faster, fewer, shorter scans—By leveraging a unique online intelligence system, Norton™ Insight targets only those files at risk
• Blocks online identity theft—Buy, bank, and browse online wherever and whenever you want
• Secure network connections—Monitor your home network and more safely connect to Wi-Fis
• Blocks threats and hackers—Two-way firewall automatically makes security decisions for you

Following are a few snapshot that I took. This first picture shows that the installation is amazingly fast. The rest of the two are interface snapshots.

The system requirements for installing Norton Internet Security 2009 are:

• Windows® XP with Service Pack 2 Home Edition/Professional/Media Center Edition
• Windows Vista® Home/Home Premium/Ultimate/Business
• 300MHz or faster processor
• 256MB of RAM
• 200 MB of available hard disk space
• Standard Web browser

Required for all installations

• CD-ROM or DVD drive

These specs also suggest that the newer version of Norton IS is much low on resource requirement. You can read a complete review of this product by PCMag here.

Costs

$114.99 for a 2 year subscription and $69.99 for one year subscription.

Trial Software:

Visit the Trial page to download and try Norton 2009 Trial software and other security softwares by Norton. [Link]

Norton has identified it as a bug and stated that it will be fixed in the next release. Until the fix is released you can try the workaround.

To access Gmail and to avoid Norton detecting it as a threat set your default Gmail access to HTTPS instead of HTTP. This will solve the issue at hand for now.

Click here to read more about Gmail Security or here to download Norton Antivirus 2009 trial version