Trend Micro and SonicWALL are both reporting about a new Spam campaign that is moving around online, making the claim that it originates from Verizon Wireless or Vodafone. The Spam offers a tool to users, which in reality is just Malware. However, the volume of the campaign is what makes the run both impressive and a little spooky.
There is no ‘Balance Checker’ tool for Verizon or Vodafone. (IMG:J.Anderson)
SonicWALL said that the fake emails, offering a “Balance Checker” tool, were being pushed at a rate of almost 200,000 emails an hour. The email messages carry the subject, “Your credit balance is over its limits” and inform users that their credit balance is due.
To be able to review the payments, the scam says that users should employ the balance checker tool attached to the email.
However, as you likely guessed, both Trend Micro and SonicWALL are reminding everyone that this attachment is Malware. Highly visible and massively blasted Malware, but no different then the Malware attached to emails offering UPS tracking services or breaking news.
The actual attachment, detected as TSPY_ZBOT.SMP by Trend Micro and Regrun by SonicWALL, is a Trojan that hijacks banking information and disables the Windows Firewall. In addition, it has rootkit abilities that make it difficult to remove and will add a compromised host to the ZBot botnet.
“Users are strongly advised not to open any suspicious-looking email even it comes from a known source. It is also good to verify any email coming from your mobile service provider just to be sure if it is legitimate or not,” Trend Micro said in an advisory.
For the record, if there are balance issues with your account, neither Verizon or Vodafone will ask you to run a tool or blast you with email to correct payment issues.
The images below are examples offered by Trend Micro.
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