In recent days, entirely false rumors of President Obama's death and the fervor surrounding the NCAA Division I Men's Basketball Tournament have been exploited by cyber criminals to compromise web security and spread malware, according to Trend Micro.

The president is doing just fine, but users of Windows Live Messenger have reported receiving messages written in French that claim to have video of an accident that led to Obama's death. Any user that receives this message is advised to immediately report it and discard the message. Anyone who clicks through the link may find their computer infected with the Buzus Trojan, which targets financial information.

"The text before the links are in French and tells users to click the link that follows," Trend Micro researcher Jonathan Leopando wrote on his blog. "Some of these links made users believe that they were viewing a photo related to an accident that supposedly killed U.S. President Barack Obama. Others used domain names similar to legitimate sites like Facebook and YouTube."

In recent months, cyber criminals have targeted almost every international news items to fool people into downloading malware. The Haitian earthquake and the Winter Olympics stand as the two most widely exploited events.ADNFCR-2553-ID-19674718-ADNFCR