Symantec, BBC implicated in phishing scam

HARBINGER OF DOOM, Symantec, has been implicated in a cynical phishing scam resulting in innocent journalists writing thousands of words of puff for its products. The latest victims are BBC writers who have been duped into providing unpaid advertising for the company.

Symantec, once renowned for providing excellent utilities and antivirus products, increasingly relies on specious "research" to generate acres of free publicity on gullible news sites, such as the BBC.

The scam is simple, and relies on inexperienced writers being unable to tell a press release from genuine research. An email, containing convincing statistics, is sent to the victim - usually a junior reporter on a web site that believes that the CPU is the brain of the computer - and youthful exuberance does the rest. The hapless reporter is completely fooled and promptly sends their journalistic integrity to the great trashcan in the sky.

The latest tragic example of the scam is illustrated by a story appearing on the BBC web site today. Completely bereft of objectivity, second sourcing or even the ability to rewrite the press release on which it is so obviously based, the unknown hack files their copy like a rabbit trapped in the headlights of an oncoming truck.

High tech crime is big business, screams the Beeb, widely quoting industry experts including Symantec and, err, Symantec. The story also contains a link to a well-known security outfit called, err, Symantec, together with a video clip showing how a leading security outfit called, err, Symantec, is fighting cyber crime.

"Internet crime has become a major commercial activity, reveals a report by computer security company Symantec. The report said cyber crime had become increasingly professional and was now a multi-billion dollar industry."

Well, bend me over and call me Susan. Who'd have thought it? This is groundbreaking news reporting, isn't it? We've certainly never heard this stuff before, except for on the BBC web site, every couple of weeks for the last five years. Every cyber crime 'expert' you've ever heard of, and a few dozen you haven't, has been bombarding the BBC with specious research for years. Sadly, the BBC knows no better and runs it all as if it were true, scaring the living bejaysus out of the innocent public and causing them to hand over the readies to the charlatans peddling their antivirus snake oil.

Look, I know I've been accused of being critical of the BBC in the past, so here's a few words of friendly advice for them. I've spent more than a fair number of years working in PR for a wide variety of IT organisations, and the Number One Method of getting lazy hacks to write about your company is to come up with some shock, horror research that proves something or other so the hacks don't have to do any work at all to produce the story you want them to print. Bung in a few made up statistics and Bob's your uncle.

Consider this extract from the BBC story, in which a Mr William Beer of Symantec warns of the growing threat:

"… well-crafted e-mail campaigns that gained a gloss of credibility by combining several different bits of data. Often, he said, these targeted attacks were aimed at the customers of smaller financial institutions.
"Attention has gone away from the larger banks down to credit unions and small banks that do not have the people and resources to fight off the attacks," he said.
"Even the smallest bank has enough money," adds Mr Beer, holding out his hand.

The moral is clear: Symantec. For God's sake hire a new PR agency, and for the BBC, hire some decent reporters who can tell fact from fiction or at least can pick up the phone and ask some questions. Oh, and while you're at it, sack the editors who should be picking this rubbish up before it makes the front page. µ

Our lawyers add: In the interests of fairness, we would like to point out that Symantec is not the only company guilty of duping innocent BBC journalists by sending them convincing-looking emails. Organisations including Apple, McAfee, Apple, Kapersky Labs, Apple, Postini, Apple, Scansafe, Apple, ICSA Labs, Apple, Thompson Cyber Security Labs and Apple have also been implicated in similar scams.

L'Inq
BBC duped in email scam