Spam

Independent: If you’re a fan of fake Rolex watches and cheap Viagra look away now. A huge spam botnet responsible for an estimated 18 billion messages a day has been taken out by security researchers. The four year old botnet – known as Grum – is believed to have been responsible for around 18% of the world’s spam emails. A botnet is a cluster of infected computers used by cybercriminals to send a variety of spam emails – often offering cheap Viagra, fake watches or unusual dating solutions. ...

Mashable: Sophos’s NakedSecurity blog outlined the threat on Wednesday. The company’s SophosLabs intercepted a “spammed-out email campaign” which was designed to spread malware. Sophos provided the following example: The blog notes that the email address above misspells “Facebook” as “Faceboook.” The link takes the user to a malicious iFrame script, which exposes the user’s computer to malware. However, within four seconds, the user’s browser is directed to a presumably innocent Facebook page like the one below to act as a smokescreen. ...

H-Online: Spammers are currently sending large volumes of spam to users of cloud storage service provider Dropbox. The H’s associates at heise Security have so far received four different pieces of German-language spam at an email address used solely to register with Dropbox, and some of their readers have reported the same problem; similar reports can also be found on the Dropbox forums. In almost all cases, the spam is for suspicious-looking online casinos. ...

Malware has been spreading on Android mobile phones that takes control of certain email accounts to create a “botnet” to send out spam, a security researcher says. Microsoft security engineer Terry Zink says the malware has infected phones of users’ Yahoo email accounts to send out spam messages. “We’ve all heard the rumors, but this is the first time I have seen it – a spammer has control of a botnet that lives on Android devices,” Zink said in a blog post on Tuesday. ...

This is an old story back from September, 2011, but since recently I’ve seen users complaining about this, I want to share it again [Credit to NakedSecurity, SophoLabs]: You may have received an automated call from a user who claim to be from Skype or somewhere which says: Attention: this is an automated computer system alert. Your computer protection service is not active. To activate computer protection, and repair your computer, go to [LINK] ...

H-Online: A new type of phishing strategy, which aims to trick unsuspecting users into installing a trojan by pretending to be an account cancellation request from Facebook, has been discovered by Sophos. The email messages link to a third party application on the site that will install a Java applet and then prompt the user to update their Flash player, but will actually deliver the trojan malware. The email messages that are sent out claim to be from Facebook and state: “We are sending you this email to inform you that we have received an account cancellation request from you.” However, Facebook never sends such account cancellation confirmation messages via email. Users who want to cancel their Facebook account can do so by visiting facebook.com/deactivate.php to deactivate their account; they may later delete it after a cool down period has passed. ...

Symantec Connect: Customers of popular email service providers have been a common target for phishers for identity theft purposes. Phishers are constantly devising new phishing bait strategies in the hope of stealing user email addresses and passwords. In April 2012, Symantec observed phishing pages that mimicked popular email services in an attempt to dupe users with attractive storage plans. Customers were flooded with fake offers of free additional storage space for services such as email, online photo albums, and documents. In the first example, the phishing site was titled “Welcome to New [BRAND NAME] Quota Verification Page”. According to the bogus offer, the additional storage plan ranged from 20 GB to 1 TB per year, at no extra cost. The phishing page boasted that the free additional storage plan will help customers prevent loss of data and the inability to send and receive emails due to exhausted storage space. It also stated that the plan will auto-renew each year and the customer can choose to cancel at any time by returning to the same page: ...

Symantec Connect: Symantec is intercepting a resurgence of spam attacks on popular brands. Spam messages that are replicas of the Wikipedia email address confirmation alert are the new vector for the present. The said spam messages pretend to be originating from Wikipedia, and are selling meds, with the following subject line: “Subject: Wikipedia e-mail address confirmation”. The spoofed Wikipedia page is a ploy to give legitimacy to the sale of meds online. The embedded URL in the message navigates to a fake online pharmacy site that is dressed up as a Wikipedia Web page. Furthermore, to give the email a legitimate look, the spammer has added the recipient’s IP address in the body of the spam mail. Needless to say this IP does not belong to the user. ...

SophosLabs is intercepting a spammed-out malware campaign, pretending to be an email about a revealing photo posted online of the recipient. The emails, which have a variety of subject lines and message bodies, arrive with an attached ZIP file (IMG0893.zip) which contains a Trojan horse. Subject lines used in the spammed-out malware campaign include: RE:Check the attachment you have to react somehow to this picture FW:Check the attachment you have to react somehow to this picture RE:You HAVE to check this photo in attachment man RE:They killed your privacy man your photo is all over facebook! NAKED! RE:Why did you put this photo online? ...

Symantec Connect: In recent years, scammers have flocked towards social networking sites as they have grown and made it easier to access a large number of potential eyeballs to convert into dollars. Brands have found value in leveraging social media to know what their customers are talking about, so, naturally, scammers are doing the exact same thing. Free iPads and iPhones Every time Apple unveils a new iPad or iPhone, you can bet there are scammers out there trying to leverage the announcement for financial gain. In the days leading up to and after the announcement of the new third-generation iPad, Twitter users who tweet about the new tablet most likely will receive some targeted Twitter replies from scammers offering the new device for free: ...