Hackers in Grand Forks, North Dakota have found a creative new route into your computer: your car's windshield. The trick, Gizmodo explains, involves "fake parking tickets that direct car owners to a site where they are instructed to download malicious software. The software itself is disguised as a ‘toolbar' that car owners would need to download in order to see their crime and atone. But it's actually another Trojan horse virus, one that installs endless popup windows and fake ‘antivirus' software and all that other garbage."

The scam has received international coverage. Even the BBC covered the story, explaining, "Drivers found the following message on the yellow ticket on their windscreen: ‘PARKING VIOLATION This vehicle is in violation of standard parking regulations". [Sic] The ticket then instructed drivers to visit a website, where drivers could ‘view pictures with information about your parking preferences.'"

Autoblog reports, "Once at the website, there are in fact photos of cars from your area that are supposedly illegally parked along with instructions to download a tool that will show you your own vehicle and explain why you were ticketed." That tool, of course, is the Trojan.

The scam may be confined to Grand Forks at the moment, but with such heavy media coverage, it's bound to appear elsewhere. So assuming you're the sort of person who rarely gets parking tickets and can't spot a fake on site (we're located in Georgetown - we all know what the local tickets look like at twenty paces), then be skeptical of any ticket you receive that asks you to visit a Web site. Trust us, it's usually best to just pay them through the mail.

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