Internauts, Beware of Spam Capitalizing on Approaching Holiday

In a warning from researchers of BitDefender, Internauts are asked to be wary of fresh e-mail-borne malware outbreaks that are themed with holiday travel, as summer vacation rapidly approaches and the general public chalks out plans to spend their time pleasurably.

According to BitDefender, spam mails confirming airline tickets account for almost 60% of the entire e-mail junk themed around summer vacation in 2013. Indeed, daily, approximately 108,000 vacation-related junk e-mails are getting dispatched, the majority of which validate airline tickets. But, the e-mails actually deliver malicious software through attached files/web-links linking up with risky pages.

The next highly-disseminated vacation themed spam is that related to bogus newsletters, advertising deals for early booking to avail worldwide luxury resorts. These e-mails have varied language texts depending upon the locations being publicized in them.

Further, for people chalking out plans for an optimum summer trip, baits such as holiday loans, travel insurance schemes, and cruise packages are utilized too.

Additionally, the airways highly attacked are US Airways, Delta Airlines or Flugdienst the Germany-built Condor.

Loredana Botezatu, Security Researcher at BitDefender, interestingly refers to one recent vacation bulk e-mail campaign, which hit Internauts planning budget for the vacation, through offers of an e-ticket package. Gmanetwork.com published this dated March 31, 2013.

Reportedly, potential Delta Airlines clients were targeted in the mentioned spam attack wherein the receivers were asked for validating their airline-ticket reservation with the airways as also check the details provided inside a PDF attachment.

But if the attachment was opened, it triggered Trojan "Sirefef" bearing rootkit features.

Botezatu says a few such spam items contain web-links which divert end-users onto a page publicizing an unbelievable weight loss place. More samples having identical name and look take end-users onto a site that hosts BlackHole, which delivers an exploit created for quietly recording the victim's browser configurations, hunting down security hacks followed with thrusting malware, he cites.

Nonetheless, for remaining safe from vacation-themed scams, BitDefender advises not to conduct reservations on suspicious/unconfirmed websites; to always verify if a business is reputed enough prior to buying anything from it; as also never follow web-links/attachments inside dubious e-mails.

Related article: Internet Advertising Firm Agrees to Follow New Standards

» SPAMfighter News - 4/5/2013