Adobe Flash Player Exploit Served Via “iPhone 5 Battery Images Leak” Emails

These days, every Apple fan is hoping to get as many details as possible on the upcoming iPhone 5. Experts have found that cybercriminals are taking advantage of this to spread their malicious elements.

The emails – titled “iPhone 5 Battery Images Leak!!!” – contain an attachment that appears to be a harmless Office document. The message’s poorly written content reads:

Dear [recipient],

Only Slighter Larger Than iPhone 4S Battery, Despite Expected LTE. In the blogosphere’s continuing quest to assemble a virtual iPhone = before Apple unveils a real one in September, 9to5Mac has published image = of what appears to be the next iPhone’s battery.

A= expected, the battery is a bit larget than the last iPhone, but not by mu=h. It jumps from 1430mAh in the iPhone 4S (up from 1420mAh in the iPhone 4= to a 1440 mAh battery.

Symantec experts warn that the harmless-looking document actually contains a number of hidden malicious .swf files which exploit a vulnerability in Adobe Flash Player to drop other pieces of malware, including a .dll file identified as Backdoor.Briba. The document itself is detected as Trojan.Mdropper.

A couple of things must be noted here, besides the usual advice of “stay away from such emails.”

Images representing the iPhone 5 battery have been leaked online just over a week ago, but users who want to learn more about it should check out reliable news sources, instead of opening documents attached to shady-looking emails.

Secondly, the Flash Player vulnerability exploited in this case has been patched up by Adobe on August 14. This is why users are advised to immediately apply the updates to ensure that even if they fall for such scams, nothing bad can actually happen to their computers.

Remember, in most cases, cybercriminals can’t push malware onto your computer if your antivirus is active and all the critical components are up to date, even if you do open attachments and click on cleverly forged links.

Adobe Flash Player is available for download here.