CA Detects Spam Run Supposedly from NY State Police

According to researchers at CA the security company, a spam mail is presently circulating online posing as a message from New York State Police.

States the security company, as for its subject line, the spam mail uses "Uniform Traffic Ticket #7046."

Apparently, the malicious electronic mail informs the recipient about him speeding up his vehicle too much therefore he's being given a penalty ticket whose print out he must take and mail to court.

But there's an .exe document within the attached file named Ticket.zip that's actually a malware installer, which CA identified as Win32/Chepvil.CT.

If run, this installer loads Windows XP Fix a fake software program. Initially, users will find a message that there's a crucial error in their hard drive therefore they must reboot their PCs.

But on restarting, the fake program would begin scanning the system followed with asserting that crucial errors have been identified within the computer's hard drive like read errors, bad sectors and failed responses to machine's instructions, and so on.

Moreover, opting for "Fix Errors," end-users will find a message stating that it won't be possible to fix many errors till they've purchased the advanced software. Naturally, this is one type of scam created for duping people into parting with their money in exchange of a worthless product, CA's researchers add.

The tricks for scaring the end-users are same as those that fake anti-virus applications employ. The programs, called rogueware or scareware, yield plentiful profits to cyber-criminals who use the revenue thus spawned for funding other spurious activities, remark the researchers.

And since the above kinds of scams are so malicious, and for lessening contamination by them, the specialists from the security company recommend users that they should never forget to scrutinize e-mail attachments using an effective anti-virus application prior to viewing them.

Eventually, it's because of the above mentioned kinds of assaults that there has been such an enormous increase in malware, remarks CA. Evidently, its (the company's) verdict received additional support when data that Panda Security published for Q2-2011 indicated that 42 fresh malware items had been designed each minute during Q2-2011.

Related article: CA Canada Found Alarming Facts About Corporate Data Loss

» SPAMfighter News - 7/22/2011