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Penny Stock Spam Mail Campaign Targets Little Familiar Mineral Firm; BitDefender


BitDefender is cautioning Internauts about one fresh penny stock bulk e-mail run which hitherto witnessed millions of spam mails landing inside inboxes worldwide so a hardly-familiar mineral firm has its stock value artificially raised.

The security company pinged over 3m distinct sample e-mails thus prompting it to describe the spam campaign as the biggest as well as most successful assault surrounding company shares during 2014. Enticing phrases have been used to attract the e-mail readers as the spammers made the messages appear legitimate through web-links for Yahoo Finance, Bloomberg, Reuters, the NASDAQ and MarketWatch.

Chief Security Strategist Catalin Cosoi with BitDefender explains how fraudsters make money out of their campaign by enticing investors with information of certain penny stock that will quickly rise in value. Called the pump-and-dump fraud, there's a general familiarity regarding the trick played, especially since the 2013 feature film 'The Wolf of Wall Street' depicted the trick used in a stock scam. When innumerable victims purchase the shares, the scammers dump or extensively sell their excess valued stocks into the same market, attaining huge monetary benefits, Cosoi adds. Help-Net-Security published this, October 14, 2014.

The spam mails show headers - "Christmas is here early my friend" or "Read up on this immediately" along with message body both crafted towards convincing readers they are forgoing benefits by not buying the shares.

Spam promoting over-valued penny stocks normally revolves around only one firm per campaign, with one fresh stock scam emerging every 2-3 months. Till now, the firms targeted in 2014 are Inspiration Mining Corporation, Rainbow International Corp., and Rich Pharmaceuticals Inc., among others.

Compromised PCs have been used to dispatch junk e-mails to distant South Korea, India and Australia. Numerous IP addresses hosted in UK too were recently spotted dispatching the e-mails.

According to Cosoi, the UK Internet Protocols in all probability are of infected PCs added to the stock spamming network-of-bots. These PCs are possibly disseminating the scam devoid of end-users' awareness, he contends. Infosecurity-magazine.com published this, October 14, 2014.

BitDefender has further talked with US Securities and Exchange Commission that stated that it was handling numerous complaints singleton stock-buyers had lodged.

» SPAMfighter News - 10/23/2014

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