E-mail about Money Transfer via Western Union Masks Trojan Assault

According to Sophos the security company, its researchers have caught malicious software within an e-mail pertaining to certain money transfer through Western Union, actively doing the rounds while actually luring recipients into taking down and running malware attachments. ZDNet published this on August 31, 2011.

Displaying a tempting caption, "Money Transfer Information," the e-mail according to Sophos, addresses the consumer telling him he has a remittance in his name about which additional information is provided within one given reliable file attachment. To en-cash the money order, he can access any bank within his town, the e-mail informs.

Moreover, Sophos said that the captions as well as the attached filenames could differ; however, all asserted that money was being transferred to the recipient through Western Union.

The security company reportedly detected the file within the given attachment as a Trojan named Mal/Zbot-CX that controlled the infected PC and facilitated remote hackers to manipulate the same.

Further, security expert Graham Cluley from Sophos stated that there were numerous individuals who still weren't doubtful of unsolicited electronic mails as also wouldn't think again before clicking on an attachment incase it claimed as being some money sent to them through Western Union. NakedSecurity published this on August 31, 2011.

In the meantime, during the same 4th-week of August 2011, Sophos further cautioned of spam mails pretending to be formal notices from FDIC (Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation). Those e-mails had an attachment named FDIC_docuemnt.zip that carried a similarly named .exe file that in reality was a Trojan installer.

Remarking about the spam assaults, Sophos stated that both the instances had nearly the same motive. Although within one, the scammers mentioned of an apparent money transfer and within the other a bogus e-mail purporting to be from FDIC that informed the recipient about the suspension of his account and so must take down fresh loadings, both spam outbreaks aimed to inject a Trojan through an attachment.

Hence, security specialists at Sophos advised people for remaining vigilant about the undesirable electronic mail, which they mustn't open especially its attachment, while must also run an anti-virus on their computers.

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

» SPAMfighter News - 9/10/2011