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Apple iPhone Publicity Boosts Spam Scam

News about the new Apple iPhone is encouraging malware to spread through social engineering tactics, as reported by PCretailmag.com on July 2, 2007.

Security Company, Secure Computing Corporation has warned that a spam mail reaching users' inboxes that tells the recipients that they have earned a new iPhone actually leads them to a fraudulent site hosting malware.

Researchers at Secure Computing discovered the website and found that it took advantage of ten ActiveX vulnerabilities with the purpose to install an evil payload that contains a rootkit. The rootkit then aids in setting a backdoor in the PC to convert it into a bot that serves the attacker's botnet.

The operation once again provides evidence of the growth in web-borne malware, said Paul Henry, VP of technology evangelism for Secure Computing, and Informationweek.com published it on July 2, 2007.

Sales of Apple's iPhone started at 6pm on June 29, 2007. There was an enormous amount of publicity on the device's launch for weeks together. This led to the building of hackers' bot that was used to spam out e-mails, said an advisory by Secure Computing.

While speaking at an interview, Ken Dulaney, VP of mobile computing at Gartner said that he was witnessing such huge excitement and attention for the first time over the release of the iPhone, as never before for any gadget. He found it absolutely incomparable to anything else, as reported by Informationweek.com on July 2, 2007.

Since the brand of the iPhone is so popular it is bound to set a wave of scams relating to the iPhone, said Henry, and PCretailmag.com published it in news on July 2, 2007.

According to Secure Computing, there have been recent evidences of web-based malware spreading through fake sites hosting videos as well as through phony greeting cards. These also generate curiosity.

In April this year, Sophos reported that there were on average 5,000 new malware-infected web pages daily. As computer users become savvier about e-mail based malware and know how to safeguard against them, hackers are focusing on the Web as their new medium of attack.

Related article: Apple Patches QuickTime 13 Month Old Flaw

» SPAMfighter News - 7/13/2007

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