Franklin, Andrews, Kramer & Edelstein

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Digital versions of Trump book Fire and Fury riddled with malware

Margi Murphy 23 JANUARY 2018 • 11:06AM
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/technology/2018/01/23/digital-versions-fire-fury-riddled-malware/

Pirated copies of Michael Wolf's tell-all Trump novel may be granting hackers access to readers PCs, potentially leaving them vulnerable to banking and identity fraud.

Booby-trapped PDF versions of the book appear almost exactly like the original with red typeface and a photo of Mr Trump on its cover. But the spoof version, which is being shared online, has only 230 pages, instead of 328, readers have been warned.

It is unclear who is circulating the PDF, but malware of this kind typically targets devices and installs keyloggers to try and steal personal details like banking logins or email account passwords.

The malware-laden PDF is detected by anti-virus software, so those who have downloaded a version can run a scan to check that their devices are protected.

Mr Trump has described the book as "full of lies" and claimed that its author is "mentally deranged". But Wolff, who has also penned a biography of newspaper tycoon Rupert Murdoch, insists that he spent "hours" in conversation with the president after gaining access to the White House in the early days of his administration.

But protestations appeared to do nothing but stoke appetite for the novel. Within two days of going on sale, 29,000 physical copies, 100,000 audio books and a further quarter of a million e-book versions of the book were sold in the United States.

Wolff's Fire and Fury, which offers a fly-on-the-wall account of life inside the White House since Mr Trump took up presidency in 2016, is currently at the top of Amazon's charts.

Mr Molsner is an employee at Kaspersky Labs, a Moscow-based antivirus software provider that is currently weathering a "geopolitical storm" in which it stands accused of allowing Russian spies a backdoor into official US government computers.

In December, Kaspersky filed a lawsuit against the Trump administration over the decision to ban the use of its products in federal systems.

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/technology/2018/01/23/digital-versions-fire-fury-riddled-malware/