Spam Reports

Microsoft Office Documents Dangerous Once Again

New avalanche of .DOC spam

By Bogdan Popa, Security and Search Engines Editor

3rd of January 2008, 11:20 GMT

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Spamming has always been a problem for us due to more or less dangerous attachments included in the emails. Spam messages contain all formats of files starting with MP3 files and ending with movies or pictures. Even Microsoft Office got affected by the spammers, as numerous .DOC files have been attached to those

dangerous messages and sent to millions of users from all around. According to JM Hipolito of Trend Micro, 2008 came with a new avalanche of .DOC spam which obviously advertises drugs such as Viagra, Cialis, Xanax or Valium.

Downloading and opening the Microsoft Office attachments brings you a special pharmacy discount for the mentioned drugs. For example, you can buy (NOT) Viagra for only $2 per pill. Pretty impressive (NOT AGAIN), don't you think?

And this is not all. A new technique has been introduced by the spammers, many of the spam messages containing signatures claiming the emails are clean as they were scanned by famous antivirus products. "McAfee Total Protection scanned an -N O-virus located within in-coming email", a spam message presented by the Trend Micro official reads.

Besides McAfee, Symantec and its Norton Internet Security is also affected by the spam messages. Here is the complete list of signatures used by the spam emails as it is published on the Trend Micro blog:

- McAfee Internet Security Suite tested and Novirus found in incoming message
- McAfee Total Protection scanned an -N O-virus located within received document
- McAfee Total Protection scanned and Novirus found in received word document
- Norton Internet Security 2007 scanned an -N O-virus located within received message
- Norton Internet Security 2007 scanned and Novirus found in incoming word document
- Norton Internet Security 2007 tested & NOinfection discovered within received message
- Norton Internet Security 2008 tested an -N O-virus located within incoming message
- Norton scanned an -N O-virus located within in-coming word document

TAGS:

security | spam | doc | microsoft | office

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