Fake E-ticket Spam Mails Target KLM Airline Flyers

According to researchers from Websense the security company, passengers of KLM Airlines the Dutch carrier are being targeted with fake e-mails supposedly confirming purchases of e-tickets while the messages circulate online.

The spam mail, while thanking the recipient because he seemingly selected KLM E-ticket, tells that it contains the receipt along with itinerary for the buyer. However, in case the recipient can't utilize the e-ticket, or in case his travel plans alter, alternatively suppose the current document comes to him erroneously then he is requested to go through the entire information inside a given attachment.

Websense researchers, meanwhile, scrutinized some randomly selected e-mail samples following which they found that there was a unique price for each e-ticket within the receipt as well as passenger sections. This, presumably, is for making the ploy unnoticeable while a .zip file is attached that's named 'KLM-e-Ticket_<NumericalValue>.zip,' the security company posts.

Reportedly, the attachments have twin malevolent binaries that are together unzipped from the condensed file. It's seen that the filename 'KLM-e-Ticket.pdf.exe' is common for both binaries that let command line admission into the hijacked PC through telnet for reaching port 8000. Interestingly, albeit the binaries try to so dupe end-users that they think they're accessing a PDF document, in reality, none of the binaries display the icon of Adobe Reader.

Websense adds in its blog post that notably these binaries are the same ones utilized within the lately issued 'Telstra Online Account' and 'Microsoft Services Agreement' e-mail scams.

Potentially the new scam can victimize Internauts who may not necessarily be KLM clients but have bought tickets lately or recipients fearing an illegal transaction on their credit cards, the researchers indicate. Help Net Security published this on September 24, 2012.

Further on according to Websense, a massive 850,000 e-mails had been tapped on September 17, 2012 that's merely one tiny proportion of the actual aggregate of messages dispatched.

Malware distributors resort to e-ticket scams as an obvious ruse which possibly has been the most frequent one during 2011 when the scams targeted American, Delta as well as US Airways all United States airlines, observes Websense.

Related article: Fake-mails Troubling Credit Union Customers

» SPAMfighter News - 10/2/2012