Phishing E-mail Scam Attacks US-CERT

US-CERT the United States Computer Emergency Readiness Team reports that it's presently a target of an enormous phishing campaign. SCMagazine.com.au published this on January 11, 2012.

It's worth noting that US-CERT coordinates security measures as well as deals with cyber assaults all over the USA. Moreover, it's run under the U.S. DHS (Department of Homeland Security).

The Computer Emergency Response Team, following the latest phishing scam's appearance on January 10, 2012, issued an online security alert to all Internauts, stating that the cyber-criminals had impersonated the electronic mail addresses of US-CERT so they could target many local, state and federal governments along with private sector companies.

Also an e-mail handler working at US-CERT stated that the phishing e-mail scam had been causing him trouble in receiving messages. SCMagazine.com.au published this.

The phishing message reportedly, has a .zip file as an attachment, which carries one malicious .eml.exe executable named "US-CERT Operation Center Reports." Captioned as "Phishing incident report," the e-mail contains one telephone number too. The sender's id displayed as soc@us-cert.gov is spoofed to make the e-mail appear from US-CERT; however, the agency points out other illegitimate ids that are also included.

However, for mitigating the danger accompanying phishing scams like the above and others, US-CERT recommends end-users that that they should follow certain security measures. 1stly, they mustn't view attachments within electronic mails that arrive from unfamiliar entities. 2ndly, they must have anti-virus software installed, while keeping signature files updated. 3rdly, they must know how to identify and shun malicious e-mail campaigns promising documents apparently, containing additional info regarding ways to avoid phishing or spam campaigns as well as socially engineered assaults.

Eventually and worryingly, the above kinds of attacks are attributed to cyber-criminals as well as U.S adversaries. During the 1st-week of January 2012, a security researcher referred to attackers from China who had been dispatching contaminated e-mails to federal contractors and agencies regarding drones as a way for intercepting U.S. intelligence data. Those e-mails utilized ids belonging to government departments like the military, stated Jaime Blasco, Manager of AlienVault Labs. Nextgov published this in news on January 11, 2012.

» SPAMfighter News - 18-01-2012

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