There seems to be a new tactic emerging among hackers trying to spread viruses that they do so via spam that contains information about recent news items. For example, there was the recent case of a worm arriving as an attachment to a mail talking about false topics like Michael Jackson's death or a conspiracy theory about the death of Pope John Paul II. The people who are trying to distribute viruses are, of course, trying to cash in on news events to try and spread their malware further.
"Hackers are constantly trying to dupe computer users into running malicious code with the promise of breaking news stories," said Graham Cluley, senior technology consultant for Sophos.
In this particular case, the W32/Kedebe-F worm, which carries an attachment that causes all sorts of problems, spread itself with an e-mail message saying that the former Pope was killed by two 'doctors' who were hired by some government bodies. Our advice? Delete this sort of thing on sight.