14 DAY TRIAL // Security researchers warn of scam emails purporting to come from Adobe employees, who advise users to buy a fake upgrade for Adobe Reader.
The emails bear a subject of "Action Required : Active Your New Adobe PDF Reader" and come from an “Adobe Support” <[email protected]> address.
The messages pose a Adobe PDF Reader software upgrade notifications and claim that a new version of the program has been released.
A link to www.adobe-download-center.com is includeed and receipients are advised to open it in order to download the upgrade.
The domain has been registered through a Russian registrar and redirects to www.pdf-new-2010-download.com, where a professionally looking website advertises a program called PDF Pro 2010.
Despite this page having nothing to do with Adobe, at first impression the program might seem legit. We can't really tell, because it asks for registration and money, before handing it to us.
However, we did notice an offer reading "Download today and receive a FREE copy of the best ALL-IN-ONE Office Solution for Your PDF Files!"
Next to it there's a picture of the open source OpenOffice suite. It's pretty safe safe to assume that a company, which tries to use a program that's already freely available, as an incentive for people to buy its own product, is deceptive and can not be trusted.
Add to that the fake Adobe emails claiming to be signed by company employees and it's clearly an elaborate scam.
So far we've seen several names used to sign the emails – Adam Anderson, John Brian, John William – all allegedly from Adobe Acrobat Reader Support.
It looks like this campaign has been running for weeks now. There are reports about it on Adobe's forum dating back to September 27, but ESET's David Harley wrote about one sent on Sunday.
"Adobe doesn’t send out unsolicited stuff like this, even when it concerns security patches and the like. If you’re not subscribed to one of their lists, that’s red flag number one," the researcher warns.