Two Different Frauds Struck Online Payment Service PayPal

According to the latest security reports, an online payment service, PayPal, has been found sending fake e-mails to customers, looking like its own log-in page.

Security experts said that fake e-mails are hard to identify until the recipient closely check them. Unlike typical PayPal e-mail messages that contained links asking the recipient to divulge his personal information, the new e-mails contain a .ZIP attachment, asking the recipient to open it.

The text of e-mails informs recipients about hacking of their PayPal accounts, telling that some malicious activities might have occurred. As part of security measures, PayPal is sending the "report" in the .ZIP file to all its users so that they can seek help from the company if they find anything unusual after logging in.

But when a recipient opens the .ZIP file to read the report, a malicious worm attacks the system. Trend Micro identified this worm as WORM_POISON.LA. It follows routines that resemble to infamous Peer-to-Peer (P2P) file-sharing application called Kazaa.

Apart from this phishing e-mail scam, there is news of a fake link to secure.uninitialized.real.error.com which is included in official e-mails sent to customers by PayPal for confirming recent payments. The news report said that PayPal has called this link official address to avail the service. Recipients configured their system to read the e-mail because HTML failed to recognize the legitimacy of the link. But a close attention on part of the recipients may make their job easier.

Michael Oldenburg, spokesman, eBay, the parent company of PayPal, wrote in an e-mail that the confusion arose due to an internal error in PayPal that was corrected on November 18, 2008, as reported by The Register on November 20, 2008.

Moreover, PayPal has been continuously hit by complex attacks in the past few months. These attacks include sending fake bills to customers for using Skype (another company owned by eBay) and other services. Phishers frequently target online payment service by sending a host of e-mails that attract recipients to PayPal sites where they are tricked into revealing their login credentials.

Related article: THE SPAM MAFIA

» SPAMfighter News - 12/5/2008