Spam Mails Promising Sexy Photos Capture WOW Passwords

Data protection and IT security company 'Sophos' has asked e-mail users to be cautious of a fresh spam campaign running by cyber criminals to distribute malicious e-mails to gamers of WOW (World of Warcraft )on the Net.

According to the spam operation's details, the contaminated electronic mails land into people's inboxes displaying the caption, "Do you like to find a girlfriend like me?" along with a text. The messages also contain an attachment named "my photos.rar," which apparently offers a dozen of Asian girl photos and a pair of sex movies.

However, the movies carry an information-stealing Trojan namely Troj/Agent-LVF that steals people's passwords playing WOW, said Sophos.

Commenting on the new spam campaign, Graham Cluley, Senior Technology Consultant at Sophos, said that it wasn't about performing well while playing certain PC game. Criminals were actually aiming at virtual assets -money, weapons and armor -to sell them in exchange of money in the real world. According to him, hackers could be described as people who cash in human weaknesses to invade users' PCs, and when pictures of a nude female were available, the same might just be too luring for some, as reported by V3 on November 28, 2009.

To stay protected, the security company advises that computer users should use a wholesome security package, which would guard them against spam, viruses, spyware and hackers. Additionally, they should be careful in case a stranger offers sexy photographs or a sum of money, and do not open attachments in the corresponding e-mails. They must not respond to those e-mails with any of their private details rather ignore them completely.

The abovementioned password-stealing Trojan demonstrates a vital issue that Microsoft pointed out in its Security Intelligence Report (Volume 7) as correct. The report compares the total number of the malware programs, which the company detected during the last six months of 2008, with that of the first six months of 2009. After comparison, it was discovered that whereas in the 2008 period the figure was only 1.2 Million, it exploded to 7 Million in the 2009 period.

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» SPAMfighter News - 12/5/2009