We've seen the headlines before, most recently in the Russia/Estonia disputewhich never escalated to armed conflict, but they're coming out again in the fighting between Russia and Georgia over the disputed South Ossetia region.

Most people I know tend to roll their eyes at these reports and consider them fantastic and overblown, a case of doomsayers and reporters looking for something shocking cooking up a whole lot of something out of almost nothing. And it's true, the extent to which any of the articles covering the conflict from the electronic angle can exaggerate is pretty much limited to denial of service attacks and website defacements, which are nothing that your average day on the Internet doesn't include plenty of examples of as it is.

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IT World reports that the messages have the subject heading "CNN Alerts: My Custom Alert," and sometimes uses legitimate news stories culled from CNN to make the messages more convincing. Users who click on the "FULL STORY" link in the message are redirect to a fake CNN site, where they are told they need to download an update to Flash Player, Adobe's popular Internet media player, to view a video clip from CNN. If users agree to download the bogus Flash update, they are trapped in an endless loop with the only option to shut down the browser or give in and install the malware.

As always, do not open email that comes from an unknown user. And Adobe recommends that you do not download Flash Player from a site other than Adobe.com. The real CNN Breaking News alerts are perfectly safe, but you must sign up for them.

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