Scam Emails Replicates Australian Power & Gas Target Netizens

Scam e-mails purporting an Australian-based energy retailer, Australian Power & Gas, are now circulating the internet, making innocent people their easy prey, reported scamdex on December 10, 2012.

Titled as "Approved Payment Receipt", the scam e-mail opens up on a warm note. It addresses itself as "Australian Power & Gas Payment Receipt," and the subject matter claims that the company has currently received a credit card payment from the recipient, for the Australian Power & Gas account. This payment has been effectively processed and the receipt information is displayed in the attached file.

"Transaction Details, Payment Time: Tue, 11 Dec 2012 07:43:54 +0900, reference one: 2404390362, Reference Two: 01600833, payment receipt Number: 3530928186" are some other information in the email.

And, to sound genuine, the e-mail also claims that this payment would appear on the recipient's credit card statement with the merchant in regards to Australian Power & Gas.

The e-mail ends on a warm note "Kind Regards" from addressing the team at Australian Power & Gas.

Message typed in the email further says that an attached file was titled: Australian Power Gas Receipt Details [string of numbers].zip. The zipped file contained the payload "Details.pdf.exe".

Nevertheless, the email does not belong to the Australian Power & Gas and the attached file also do not have a transaction record as claimed. The attachments in reality have of the .zip file including the malware. When the attached file was unzipped, it was found to contain a malicious.exe file. This was so done in an attempt to trick people into trusting that the file is a risk-free PDF, it has been provided with the double extension.pdf.exe (as shown above). If a user opens the, exe file, the malware would be automatically installed. Usually, such malware can share with inaccessible servers managed by criminals, harvest sensitive details from the infected computer and download malware, claimed the security experts while examining the current malicious email comments.

Australian Power & Gas has alerted the customers about the fake e-mails through a post on the social networking site, Facebook. The Facebook page contains an informative message alerting people about the circulation of a fake page masquerading Austrian energy retailer containing a malicious link. It further advices people to be careful while opening these mails as viruses might be automatically installed in their systems without their knowledge.

Also, Internauts are suggested to delete the e-mail immediately from their inbox, in case they have received it.

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» SPAMfighter News - 12/24/2012