Sophos Intercepts Fake Amazon UK E-mails

Sophos the security company cautions that an e-mail attack is widely spreading as Internet crooks mimic one authentic e-mail from Amazon U.K.

With its main office located in Seattle, Washington (USA), Amazon.com, it maybe noted, serves consumers across the world being a multinational organization catering to e-commerce from USA.

The scam e-mail titled "Your Order with Amazon.co.uk," mentions an order placed for an unknown product. The sender's id appears real. The web-links embedded on the e-mail too seem real, however, incase any end-user attempts at finding out which product he has apparently ordered, by viewing a given attachment labeled "Your Order Details with Amazon.zip," he'll instantly contract malware.

Hopefully, majority of recipients may be intelligent enough and desist from viewing a zipped folder inside an enigmatic e-mail; nevertheless, the same can be excused if they become puzzled with the so-called source from where it comes. Undoubtedly, Amazon UK isn't involved in this, howsoever. It isn't the sender of the e-mail, in spite of the forged sender's id utilized within the assault, indicating so.

Sophos' researchers, who examined the malware, said it was a virus dubbed Mal/BredoZp-B that had the ability to steal users' private data, including bank login/credit card particulars along with their passwords, software keys and profiles.

Telling further about the new virus-laced electronic mail scam, Senior Technology Consultant Graham Cluley of Sophos blogged that albeit much was being discussed lately about drive-by download attacks while hijacked websites were getting utilized for serving malicious software to innocent PC-owners' machines, it deserved reiteration that malware delivered through e-mails wasn't anywhere near extinct. Nakedsecurity.sophos.com published this dated May 14, 2013.

Cluley suggests that Internauts must forever maintain security products on their computers up-to-date as also owing to the danger the above threats can pose to their systems, they should treat unsolicited e-mails with suspicion.

Besides, cyber-criminals vandalizing the brand name i.e. Amazon isn't something new. During September 2012, malevolent e-mails surged online posing as arriving from Amazon.com. spyware Sucks, which detected those messages, described them as telling recipients about the processing of their purchase-order related to an $800 (EUR640) worth HD television of Samsung.

» SPAMfighter News - 5/20/2013