Bogus Phone Calls are made by Cybercriminals to Install Malware Companies Computer

Cyber thieves are employing a new social-engineering method - hoax business calls to install malicious software on the machines of their company targets, as accords to security firm Symantec.

The crooks first call chosen financial employees at the specified firms, notifying them of pending bills which will soon reach to them by email, Symantec published.

Due to the expectation of the staffers of the pending bills, they are less doubtful and more liable to open the "invoices" attached to the emails, security experts add.

Although the attached "invoices" includes a Trojan horse identified by Symantec as a type of "W32.Shadesrat," which is a remote access Trojan (RAT) that hackers use to grab the detail from a computer.

Shadesrat can embezzle passwords and conduct DDOS or distributed denial-of-service attacks, as per write-up from Symantec from 2011. It can be licensed for US$40 TO $100 a year, Symantec added.

As per Symantec, "the cyber attacks are presently localized to organizations of France" and their subsidiaries in Romania, Luxembourg, and other countries. The cyber crooks have been distributing the malware as bogus bills since February 2013, but it was only in April 2013 that they started calling victims before time to attract them into unfastening the malware-ridden accounting paperwork.

By targeting finance employees, the cybercriminals can penetrate their systems and embezzle corporate banking credentials and other important information to carry out subsequent scams.

"The hacker is prepared well and has usually got the email id and the phone number of the targeted employee before the attack," a blog post by researchers at the security firm explained. "Victims of these cyber attacks usually tend to be employees or accountants working with the department of finance of these organizations. As dealing with invoices is a work they do on regularly, this bait has the potentiality to be fairly influencing."

The company said the attackers may have just restricted information on their targets and suggest those getting a call ask additional questions to confirm the caller is genuine or not.

"Organization also require to be alert that personally identifiable worker details that remain outside of your company, lets say in the type of a bill, can be employed against you even if a business associate become infected," Symantec added.

» SPAMfighter News - 5/21/2013