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Zeus Operators Recruit Money Mules via Fake Job Postings

Fortinet the security company, in its Threat Landscape Report for October 2010 warned that money mules, practicing money laundering after deceptively getting funds via the Zeus botnet, were hired via genuine appearing job ads like "administrative representative," "money-transfer broker" and "payment-processing broker."

A recent e-mail seeking to recruit money mules had the header "Re: CV," Fortinet discovered. In that, the recipient was offered a job for "administrative representative" carrying a salary of 5,000 euros every month along with commission. The job required administering daily financial obligations associated with clients, along with making financial reports every week among other duties.

Remarking about this, Project Manager Derek Manky for Fortinet's Cyber-security and Threat Research stated that most jobs currently observed offered the mules about 10% commission to fulfill a transfer. By making a few uncomplicated mouse clicks, the mule could net about $1,000 for a transfer of $10,000, he exemplified. Marketwatch.com published this on October 27, 2010.

Additionally the project manager stated that as per Fortinet's "Threat Predictions Realized Report for 2010," during the current year (2010), there had been forceful hiring of money mules to assist Internet crooks launder money.

Thus to help individuals from turning into money mules, Fortinet advises them to remain cautious about job offers, which pledge high rewards while requiring little work experience or none at all. Also, people should also be wary of unclear or vague work descriptions and turn down jobs, which involve fund transmissions out of a foreign country. Finally, they mustn't give away personal information like the details of their bank accounts.

The company, aside the above discoveries, as well outlines in its recent report the ten most prevalent malware threats of October 2010. These are: W32/Krypt.B!tr.dldr (33.4%), W32/Agent.OUH!tr (30.4%), W32/Krypt.U!tr (5.6%), W32/Krypt.D!tr.dldr (3.9%), W32/FakeAV.77F4!tr (1.7%), W32/Oficla.AIY!tr (1.6%), W32/Oficla.WK!tr (1.0%), W32/Netsky.P@mm (0.8%), JS/Feebs.A@mm (0.7%), and JS/HtmlProt!tr (0.5%).

Further, the threats found to be worse on the Web during October 2010 included pornography (67.2%), malware (29.0%), spyware (2.8%), and phishing (1.05%).

Lastly, Fortinet outlines that USA was the country worst hit with spam at 10.64% followed with Japan (8.12%), France (6.57%), Taiwan (3.05%), and Canada (2.90%).

Related article: Zeus Trojan Stole Huge Amount of Information

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