Computers can become infected with a data-stealing Trojan

Oct 10, 2013 11:23 GMT  ·  By

The name and reputation of United Airlines is leveraged by cybercriminals in a spam campaign that’s designed to distribute a piece of malware meant to steal information from infected computers.

The emails identified by Bitdefender are entitled “Notification” and they read something like this: “You’ve been upgraded from New York, NY to Las Vegas, NV (LAS) on Web., Oct. 16, 2013. Your new seat is 9D. Attachment is recap of your flight information.”

The attachment is not a recap of flight information, but a Trojan (Trojan.Downloader.JQCM) that’s capable of stealing login credentials for FTP clients, browsers, and email clients.

If you come across such messages, ignore them. The names of the cities, the date, the seat number and even the name of the airline company might be changed, but if you see a similar email with an attachment, it’s most likely part of a cybercriminal scheme.

If you already fell for it and opened the attachment, scan your computer with an updated antivirus solution.