YCSO Alerts about CableOne-Spoofed Phishing E-mails

Yavapai County (Arizona, USA) based YCSO (Yavapai County Sheriff's Office) reports that customers of the cable service provider CableOne are getting e-mails that pose as communication from CableOne. Abc15.com published this during the end-week of December 2011.

Reportedly, a few of the electronic mails assert as being sent from the "CableOne Mailserver Administrator" or "CableOne Web-mail Team" and discuss about e-mail maintenance during the forthcoming period.

Specifically, according to a sample e-mail, as CableOne was just recently performing a system upgrade it noticed that a subscriber from amongst its numerous consumers had contaminated its network with one PC-virus that has spoilt its database. Moreover, there's also overcrowding of accounts with CableOne due to unknown account registrations, therefore, the cable company is closing a few accounts, with one being of the e-mail recipient, which shall be upgraded, the e-mail tells.

The e-mail further tells that for solving this problem, every affected consumer should answer the given message instantly so that his account doesn't get shut down unnecessarily. Thereafter, the message directs the recipient to provide his username and password in 24-hrs so that he can be cleansed off the virus.

Eventually, the e-mail warns that if the recipient fails to answer the message then his account will be terminated.

Meanwhile as per the YCSO Officials, CableOne doesn't dispatch e-mails related to 'change confirmations' like in the above case alternatively request one for providing or verifying his private alternatively account details over e-mail. Hence, people who've been made preys of the malicious e-mail campaign require lodging a complaint with the YCSO, the Officials add.

Worryingly, according to security researchers who examined the incident, it's because of the above kinds of phishing e-mail scams that there's been an increase in phishing online. Moreover, in support of their remark Kaspersky Labs' Spam Report for November 2011 indicates that phishing e-mail rates from among the entire e-mail traffic became twofold compared to that of October 2011, as well as averaged at 0.02%.

Conclusively, in a similar incident as above, during March 2011, CableOne was targeted with another scam that involved phishing e-mails soliciting personal information from recipients.

» SPAMfighter News - 1/6/2012