Spammers Deceiving Users for Cash & Money

As per the Websense Security Labs ThreatSeeker Network, hackers have started thriving on economic issues like credit crunch, housing costs and high gas prices to fool users and to spread spam. The inflation issue has proved troublesome for the consumers but spammers have not even battled an eyelid.

Also, with the increasing number of victims of financial spam, the Researchers of Websense also analyzed an increment in invitations for credit cards, debt consolidation services and credit reporting services.

Earlier, attackers have used "pump and dump" spam stock investment plans, which raise the price of the stock of a company by fraudulently exaggerating details and statements. With the stock market going down, Websense Researchers also examined decline in these kinds of campaigns.

Websense also announced some of the major domains where the spammers could attack in 2008. These are Web 2.0 applications, Chinese Olympics, iPhone 3G and online ads.

Researchers also revealed that spammers have introduced a harmful mail spam campaign that uses social-engineering tools. The users, who click on the attached link for gathering "more details" on iPhone, could end up in installing a Trojan malware that downloads a virus and makes the system vulnerable to the hackers.

Earlier, a same kind of attack made for iPhone was founded by Sunbelt Software. Windows-run systems were attacked by malware caused by accessing authentic sites like google.com or yahoo.com in which an attached link lured users to access iPhone.com. Then, the users are taken to a fake site under the command of hackers.

Experts think that these scams are part of criminal-to-criminal (C2C) business plan. Shockingly, owners of harmful sites share their victims with each other to strengthen the hold of one site and give business to the other. Trojan 2.0 attacks access sites and regular Web 2.0 technique to use authentic Web services.

Also, researchers also claimed that Crimeware developers now offer "CRIMEWARE TOOLKITS" to other hackers. These plans offer users guidelines to peep into a system and then steal details for monetary gains. However, the hackers can also opt for the older way by buying details assembled by keyloggers, trojans and other kinds of Crimeware.

Related article: Spammers Continue their Campaigns Successfully

» SPAMfighter News - 7/16/2008