Spam Campaigns Spotted Circulating Malware or Extorting Money

The security firm CA has of late spotted twin spam campaigns that used scare tactics against potential victims.

One of them is a wire transfer campaign that incites recipients' curiosity since it involves a huge sum of money. In this campaign, the spammers send an e-mail which states that the sender has received a wire transfer of $25,122 from the recipient's firm. While he (the e-mail sender) doesn't know how it came into his account, he found the recipient's e-mail address within the message written for the beneficiary, the message claims. It then provides an attachment, apparently the wire-transfer's copy that the sender's bank provided. Finally, it requests the unwary recipient to tell the purposes for which the transfer was sent to the sender.

Meanwhile, the said attachment includes an executable file, which in reality is malicious as it drops Trojans, namely Win32/XPGuardian and Win32/Renos.

The second spam campaign, spotted by the security experts, involves an online air ticket scam. Its malicious e-mails purporting to be from Midwest Airlines pose as confirmation of receipt of the so-called ticket. These messages draw the notice of travelers as well as non-travelers alike. They tell their recipients that a hefty sum has been debited to their debit/credit card to cover the ticket booking charges, although, no such booking was actually made.

The spam e-mails inform that a charge of $874.35 has been made to the recipient's credit card. Also, when such ticket orders are made on the Airlines' website, the purchaser gets a 10% rebate. Therefore, an attachment is provided containing the plane ticket along with the invoice. The recipient may just take a colored print out of the same and obtain the ticket for the trip, the e-mail concludes.

However, in this case too, the attachment is only fake security software that on installation produces false infection alerts, scaring users into purchasing the software or giving away their hard-earned cash.

Thus, security experts suggest users that if any e-mail comes to them, which is from an unknown person, they must treat it as a malicious message or spam. Also, they shouldn't click on any given link or attachment.

Related article: Spam Scam Bags a Scottish Connection

» SPAMfighter News - 4/9/2010