Spam Mails Supposedly from Fox News Deliver Malicious Software

Websense the security company warns about cyber-crooks who're attempting at duping Internet-users into downloading malware that steals information, by distributing fake news reports in e-mails which supposedly arrive from Fox News the well-known news channel.

Titles in the spam mails vary like "Obama Sending US Forces to Syria,'' "US deploys 19,000 troops in Syria" or "U.S. Military Action in Syria - is it WW3 start?"

Websense says there seems to be web-links inside the bogus e-mails so-called from Fox News that lead onto different news articles as well as videos concerning United States military operations within the strife-torn Syria; however, onto certain posts as well regarding Farrah Abraham who's currently a mother in her teen year along with Kate Upton the celebrity model.

Unfortunately, upon hitting the web-links, Internauts rather than getting the site for Fox News land on a legitimate site from amongst many which cyber-criminals already hijacked.

Websense highlights that these sites that cyber-criminals manipulated divert end-users onto more websites, which harbor BlackHole the infamous attack toolkit. The toolkit through its malicious code exploits loopholes inside the victim's computer. In case both the code as well as hijack turn out effective then Trojan's Cridex payload seemingly gets delivered that characteristically filches banking credentials while also exfiltrates confidential data, particularly Personally Identifiable Information for carrying out illegal activities.

Websense notes that the spam outbreak seemingly aimed attack on various industries as well as countries, on 27th June 2013, starting 1600 Pacific Standard Time, with approximately sixty thousand malware strains that got identified and blocked.

The security company, on its blog, remarks that it's hard for assessing the outbreak's overall efficiency; however, since the attackers applied extreme sophistication to their social engineering and combined it with recent malicious software and attack codes' utilization, the outcome is a high danger for targeted computers. Community.websense.com published this dated June 28, 2013.

It's advisable that end-users double-check the id from where any e-mail arrives, however authentic may the message appear, to ward off infection. Also, they should load anti-virus software that's regularly updated so as to protect their computers from malware, phishing, spam and/or fraud.

» SPAMfighter News - 7/8/2013