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Sophos Detects Spam Diverting E-mail Recipients onto Malware-bearing Websites

Sophos the security company reports that one newly-launched spam outbreak that's circulating online is diverting victimized computers onto malevolent websites.

According to the company, the spam assault hitherto dispatched malicious e-mails to a large number of recipients, with the e-mails apparently, containing an adult movie file embedded in various names.

These e-mails also have varied captions, but they all contain an HTML-based attachment having a female name. For instance, the attached file maybe named "Mona Fletcher returned with new movie (MonaFletcher.html)" or "Juliet Morton represents new movie (JulietNorton.html)."

Essentially the messages are pretty direct too, while being crafted solely towards so enticing unwitting recipients that they proceed to open the attachments. But, then they're only diverted onto a porn site, the security company cautions.

Sophos says that the filename in the attachment has been identified in its labs as Mal/JSRedir-K.

The company therefore reiterated that users must be careful in opening attachments from unsolicited e-mails for they could divert them onto websites serving malware.

Describing the above stated spam assault further, Senior Technology Consultant, Graham Cluley at Sophos stated that in the event of a Web-browser opening a site that was exclusively porn-based, the Web-surfer mightn't know how well to explain it; however, apart from that, there could even be possibilities that his browser would get led onto a malicious site infecting his system with malware. Gmanetwork.com published this dated May 1, 2012.

Worryingly, the above kinds of spam attacks explain as to why there's increased malware online, according to Sophos' security researchers. Serving as a supporting basis to the researchers' analysis, 'Eleven' another security company, in its January-March, 2012 report reveals that e-mail-borne viruses was responsible for 0.8% of the total electronic mails dispatched during March 2012, while in general, e-mail-borne viruses rose 83.7% starting December 2011.

A similar spam campaign that Sophos has identified is one, which too related to porn. In that, scareware e-mails stated that the recipients' PCs were displaying child porn material, and subsequently held them hostage to ransom in exchange for providing a solution, according to the Canadian Anti-Fraud Center during the 3rd-week of April 2012.

Related article: Spike in Attacks Causes Early Release of Windows Patch

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