New malware attack targets Twilight fans

In case you're not part of the lovesick teen-promise ring set, the second film in the Twilight series, New Moon, arrives in theaters this Friday, and its slobbering audience is desperate for any kind of taste it can get of the wildly anticipated movie. Any Harry Potter nerd will tell you the same thing.

But fanatical franchises like this invariably lead to danger, as fans let their guard down, exposing themselves -- and their computers -- to risky situations.

A new Twilight scam making the rounds and exposed by PC Tools, isn't a whole lot different from the usual M.O., but here's a primer on how it works.

It all begins with a web search: Users search for "Stephenie Meyer" (a misspelling of the name of the author of the Twilight books) on the web, and find (rather high) in the results a link to a result reading "Stephanie Meyer at 365Multimedia.com," with the description "Stephenie Meyer interview on Twilight the movie starring Robert Pattinson and Kristen Stewart."

Sounds harmless enough, but 365Multimedia.com doesn't actually host interviews (it's a desktop background and screensaver website), and the link in question doesn't actually go there either. Instead, users are directed to a malicious website that takes that age-old scareware path: A pop-up alerts users that they are infected with some sort of malware, and then directs them to a download site so they can get a phony antivirus software product to remedy the issue.

At that point, the user is asked for his credit card number, additional malware is installed on the machine, and Robert Pattinson is nowhere to be found. Now that sucks. (Bites? Pick your own favorite vampire reference...)

The good news is that most anti-malware software should protect you from actually falling prey to this scam even if you do click on the link, but do keep in mind that extra vigilance is in order when getting information about especially popular topics (remember that Anna Kournikova had her own virus at one time) and when visiting sites you've never heard of.