We’ve all drunkenly left a book, camera or something behind after a night out in the pub. Just the other week the bartender at my local Facebooked me letting me know that I had forgot my bag. I bet Gray Powell wished he had someone behind the bar looking out for him.

You’ve likely heard all about Gray by now. He is either a fictional character in an elaborate PR stunt or just another unlucky drunk who forgot something he shouldn’t have. Of course, in his case, that thing is a prototype of the highly anticipated Apple iPhone 4G.

What’s not surprising about this story is how fast it spread around the internet. The story passed quickly around the blogs and made it to traditional media in no time. On the way of course it spawned mocking Facebook pages and funny t-shirts.

What is surprising is how quickly malicious cyber criminals have sought to capitalise on the story. Bogdan Calin over at Acunetix reports that four out of 10 search results for Gray on Google’s first page were links to malware. Bogdan has noticed a trend of just how inventive malware writers are nowadays. They are no longer just trying to attack the masses with blanketing messages of widespread interest, they are now making custom attacks looking at very specific interests, in this case, picked up from Google’s Hot Trends page.

That’s also one of the findings in Speed client Symantec’s Internet Security Threat Report, which came out today. Among other things, the ISTR found that hackers are using social media to learn about potential victims, then attacking them using specific keywords that they’ll be likely to respond to. Consequently, as individuals we all need to think more about what information we make available.

UPDATE: Just confirmed Gray is in fact a real person and does work for Apple. He is a friend of a friend from Facebook.