Spammers Choose Saudi Prince to Send Fake E-mails in Middle East

According to security firm Trend Micro, a spam e-mail purporting to be originating from billionaire Prince of Saudi Arabia Al-Waleed is circulating over the Internet in the Middle East and African region.

This spam e-mail is sent from a Yahoo! mail account, where the name of the Prince is used as sender's name. The e-mail includes exact details to contact Kingdom Holdings.

In the text of the e-mail, Prince says that to the tune of the latest international foray for gainful investment taking place worldwide, he looks for this medium to enhance his domestic and foreign alliances through various services like, Real Estate Business, Micro Financing, Mortgage Banking and a multitude of various other profitable ventures.

Then, the vicious e-mail also asks the receiver to communicate for potential business cooperation.

As revealed by the security firm, the UAE, Saudi Arabia and Israel confront highest spam levels within the Middle East.

According to Nick Black, technical manager at Trend Micro, the e-mail truly demonstrates a higher level of accuracy seen in the present day spam, as per the news published by ITP.net on April 27, 2010.

He further explained that what the researchers are observing now in the spam is an essence of intelligence higher than it was 3-4 years back. In future, spam will gain more expertise and smartness. The industry brings in enormous financial gains, which is actually and unfortunately pulling in highly talented people.

Experts said that when spam, for the first time, came into scene, many believed that awareness alone will do suppress its growth. However, as spammers go on with their intricate and sophisticated techniques, and continue to prosper from the above discussed attacks, they do not show any signals of retarding.

Moreover, according to Black, the Middle East region is more vulnerable to such attacks due to a general deficiency of IT awareness and skills. Spam in Arabic language will become more rampant, that is, e-mails in Arabic language pertaining to Arabic events and targeted to speakers who speak this language. Consequently, it becomes very easy for cyber crooks to pluck the low-hanging fruit.

Related article: Spammers Continue their Campaigns Successfully

» SPAMfighter News - 5/10/2010