Hackers Eye Instant Messaging Applications

German security experts are cautioning Windows Live Messenger users of a new cyber threat. According to G Data SecurityLabs, a recent increase in phishing sites and spam that direct to the services and an apparently endless bogus friend requests has been observed.

The spam e-mails are hitting the inboxes of users all across the world carry subject lines - Silje HUTCHINSON added you as a friend on Windows Live, THEODORA BOUCHER added you as a friend on Windows Live, and the list continues endlessly.

The links that are provided in these e-mails take direct users to a software website having a Russian TLD - buy-softwarestore.ru - which promotes unbelievably low priced products. The scammers, through this scam campaign, aims at acquiring the personal information of the users.

In addition to this, a fake application has also been discovered to be in circulation. The application promises user to tell him who is blocking him. Actually, it is just another scam to deceive unwary netizens. In this scam, users are asked to reveal their name and password in order to get the information.

Through the abovementioned promotion, two different services are offered. Users are asked to give their password and username either to 'view a list of those who blocked their account' or to 'view the names of those users who removed their account from the friend's list.

These services were tested by Eddy Willems, Security Evangelist at G Data's SecurityLabs. They made an account, named Michael, in order to test these services, said Willems. As expected, the results were disappointing, reported Market Press Release on June 28, 2010. In fact, the "who-deleted-you" service didn't even returned any information regarding contacts.........it only asked user to wait for the page to get downloaded completely. However, nothing really happened when it got downloaded.

None of the promised services logged into that account even after many hours. Explaining the reason, experts said that with just two contacts, Michael would have possibly not attracted cybercriminals to that extent that they put effort into. IM accounts mostly contain several contacts including valuable information.

Related article: Hackers Redirect Windows Live Search to Malicious Sites

» SPAMfighter News - 7/9/2010