AppRiver Spots E-mail Scams Associated With Western Union and DHL

Security researchers from AppRiver the security company are cautioning everyone that fresh malicious e-mail campaigns are circulating online in the pretext of messages from DHL the firm that delivers packages and Western Union the website that deals with money transfers.

It's believed the DHL scam involves e-mails utilizing the firm's known logo in yellow and red so these can deceive recipients into thinking that the messages are authentic, which addressing the customers, tell them that the DHL courier couldn't deliver their packages to the addresses given to it.

The messages then continue that users can obtain the undelivered packages by following a web-link embedded on the bogus e-mails that apparently reveal the addresses - the locations of the held up parcels. But on following the links, users are taken onto a malevolent file having a .zip extension.

Meanwhile, the Western Union hoax involves e-mails that though don't exhibit the imaginative graphics and colors, but they reveal simple alluring text. It reads that the Western Union Money Transfer Deal, which the e-mail recipient had asked for previously, hasn't been approved. However, additional details about the transfer's authentication alternatively refund of money is provided within the document that is attached with the message, the text says. AppRiver.com reported this on December 1, 2010.

The said attachment, which is in the form of a zipped file, like in the case of the DHL e-mail scam too can be viewed via following a given web-link. But the link stores the notorious Zeus malware that steals online banking credentials from users' computers and then uses those credentials for wiping out bank balances.

State the security researchers that it's because of these kinds of scams that computers becoming infected with the Zeus Trojan are increasing in number. AppRiver highlights this fact in its "Threat and Spamscape Report for October 2010," which was published during November 2010.

According to that report, sometime in mid-October 2010, the company started noticing a huge number of inbound e-mails that tried to disseminate Zeus thus resulting in one massive rise in traffic, so publishes Esecurityplanet.com during the 1st week of November 2010.

Related article: AppRiver Reports Security Trends for November 2008

» SPAMfighter News - 12/16/2010