Customers of Amazon Cautioned About Malicious Email Campaign

Softpedia.com reported on 18th October, 2014 quoting recent warning of security experts as "customers of Amazon in UK should be on the lookout and be careful when they get notifications via email from the e-retailer because a malicious email operation is targeting them."

The notifications have been maligned with malicious attached files under the disguise of a MS Word document causing computer hijacking.

The document has a deposit of macro instructions which leads to the downloading of a strain of malware.

Macros are scraps of VBA (Visual Basic for Applications) code which prove useful in automating tasks that are used frequently but they also create a security risk and due to this risk, they are immobilized by default in Office programs.

Security experts say that 'weststarradio.co.uk' website hosted malware channeled in by the macro employed in this attack might have been compromised especially for this purpose and large number of threats have been detected on scanning the malicious file.

The main purpose of these malicious email messages sent by cybercriminals is to trick the curious recipients into opening the malicious attachment which will infect their computers with Trojan horse or a virus.

Once your PC becomes tainted with this Trojan horse, the criminals masterminding these emails will gain entrée and take control over your PC remotely from any place of the world. They may also spy on you and use your PC to commit online crimes by stealing your personal and financial credentials.

However, if you have already opened the malicious attachment then you should scan your computer completely with antivirus software installed in it. You have to be careful while opening the email attachments because name of the attachment may be changed.

Security experts advise to download free antivirus software on your computer if you don't have antivirus software installed in your computer.

Moreover, this is not the only malicious email campaign exploiting the name of Amazon as way back in July 2014, a fraudulent email sent to inboxes of users all over the world with an order notification message purporting to be from Amazon. The message thanked recipients for ordering with Amazon and asked them to see details of the order by opening an attached malicious file.

» SPAMfighter News - 10/28/2014