Heading off into the weekend, there are two Spam campaigns worth a mention. One of them offers a chance to see a glittery vampire and a wolf that looks more like a teddy bear, while the other wants you to pay someone.
Spam campaigns offer bill collecting and vampires. (IMG:J.Anderson)
The first scam for the weekend comes from researchers at Cloudmark who have noticed about 2.5 million emails begging for money floating around. The email subjects all start with “payment request from” but will change depending on the retailer or major business of the moment. So far, Cloudmark has observed “payment request” emails from DuPont, Converse, Mars Inc., Morgan Stanley, and oddly enough, Big Lots.
“The payloads for these messages have nothing to do with any of the companies mentioned, of course,” Cloudmark said in their memo on the Spam run. “Those companies are just innocent victims whose familiar names are called out to trick you into opening the email message.”
The attached files do share a common bond however, as they are all Malware. Kaspersky is identifying the attachments as Trojan.Win32.Sasfis.vbw; Trend Micro calls them TROJ_AGENTT.WTRA. Both are variants of the zBot Trojan, noted Cloudmark.
Unless you were seriously expecting DuPont to collect on an overdue bill, it is safe to delete that email, and any others that come with “payment request from” as the subject.
The other item to look for this weekend relates to the pre-teen or teen set, and even some adults. We’re speaking of Twilight naturally, and if you have a fan in your house, then you’re likely going to be seeing the second movie “New Moon” in the very near future.
However, criminals are already tempting those looking to get a sneak peek of the film a day or so early, according to PC Tools. The image below is just one example of a page where you are told you can watch “New Moon” online. The second the play button is clicked, the page shifts and Rogue anti-Virus is pushed to the computer.
Earlier this week, PC Tools sent out a warning to Twilight fans who want more information about the author of the popular series. When users searched for “Stephenie Meyer” they would encounter a search result that read “Stephenie Meyer at 365Multimedia.com.”
But instead of seeing a legitimate interview, fans would be told their computer was infected with Malware, thanks to more Rogue anti-Virus software. PC Tools expects that as the movie opens and more people start talking about it online, these scams will continue.
If you want to see the movie, the best bet is to get a ticket and avoid the “free” showings online.
Also related to these email scams is a new alert from MessageLabs, the Donbot botnet has started pushing Spam that uses the popular micro-blogging service Twitter as a tie-in. Within 24-hours, what started out as a small run is now a Spam campaign that accounts for 4-percent of global Spam.
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