E-mail Recipients Alerted of Scam Purportedly from FBI

According to security researchers, an e-mail scam has been recently spotted which poses as communication from the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) notifying recipients that they've gone to 40 illegitimate websites. SurfMuhlenberg.com published this on July 14, 2011.

Importantly, IC3 the Internet Crime Complaint Center cautioned of these fraudulent electronic mail campaigns during 2005 and 2006 through the issuance of 3 security advisories dated February 23, 2005, November 22, 2005 and July 24, 2006 respectively.

Evidently, the February 23, 2005 security advisory indicated that the FBI was wary about a spam mail falsely asserting as being sent from fbi.gov e-mail accounts. Essentially, those accounts related to e-mail ids such as fbi@fbi.gov, web@fbi.gov, officer@fbi.gov and police@fbi.gov.

Asking recipients of the spam mail to reply to queries given within an attachment, the spammers, through the attachment, actually infected the user's computers with malicious program so they might compromise the systems alternatively seize personal information. The researchers reportedly, detected the program as worm W32.Sober.K@mm.

During 2005, IC3 started receiving additional complaints, counting more than 5,300, about the fake electronic mails asserting that recipients visited 30 illegitimate websites. However, the total number of associated grievances dropped significantly to about 130 during 2006.

Aside this, IC3 also got complaints numbering an absolute aggregate of 1,600 stating that spam mails reached recipients' inboxes telling them they visited over 40 objectionable sites. During the following year (2006), an additional 300 complaints were booked.

Thereafter, with 2006 getting over, the Internet Crime Complaint Center got merely 2 related complaints during 2007 and 2008 respectively. However, currently, the flow of the spam mails has once more begun emerging. Say the security researchers that scammers continue to utilize phishing e-mail ids featuring the extension fbi.gov. They (scammers) are continuously telling the e-mail recipients that the FBI found their Internet Protocol addresses logged into over 40 illegitimate websites, and that it's important they reply to the queries within the attachment that actually carries malicious software.

Eventually, the researchers urged users getting any of the said spam mails to avoid opening its attachment, notify the IC3 about it followed with deleting the message permanently.

Related article: E-Crime Reporting Format To Be Launched in July

» SPAMfighter News - 7/28/2011