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Stories about: spam


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Belgian and Dutch Users Targeted by ING and ABN Amro Scams

Unread messages, blocked online banking accounts, security alerts, and verifications are all pretexts used by cybercriminals to launch phishing campaigns that target the customers of ING and ABN Amro from Belgium and Netherlands. Experts from MX Lab report that compared to other periods, on April 10, the number of t...

11 April 2012
14:31 GMT

Google Users Targeted with Account Verification Scams

Credentials that protect Google accounts are highly valuable for cybercriminals because they are used to access a number of services. That’s probably why scammers have launched a new campaign that’s designed to steal usernames and passwords. According to Sophos experts, the emails bear the subject Accoun...

11 April 2012
08:30 GMT

Anonymous Supporter Sends Occupy Protest Calendar to Stratfor Subscribers

When Stratfor was hacked last Christmas, Anonymous publicly made available the entire subscriber email database. It turns out that someone put that massive list of emails to good use and sent the owners of the addresses the schedule for Occupy protests planned for later this year. According to City Security and Resi...

6 April 2012
08:44 GMT

Twitter Takes Biggest Spammers to Court

Twitter spam isn't much of a problem, in the sense that it's not a bigger problem than in other places online, but it exists and most users encounter it from time to time. Twitter has been doing well at combating spam, at the very least, it's doing a lot better than in some previous years. Now though,...

6 April 2012
08:32 GMT

Scammers Target Facebook Users in Polymorphic Attack

Malicious Facebook advertisements usually lead users to survey scams, pieces of malware, phishing sites and other types of dangerous cybercriminal schemes. However, Bitdefender experts came across a polymorphic attack that could end in any of these scenarios. The attack starts by promising users an alleged adult vid...

6 April 2012
07:49 GMT

Phony AT&T Wireless Bills Serve Malware

In the past couple of days, Commtouch experts have noticed a large number of fake AT&T bills landing in inboxes. The malicious emails, bearing the title“Your wireless bill is ready to view,” urge recipients to click on several links. “Log in to myAT&T to view your bill and make a payment. Or regist...

5 April 2012
10:13 GMT

Instagram Users Targeted by Gift Card Scams

Users of the popular photo-sharing app Instagram may be presented with a shady comment that claims Instagram and Best Buy have teamed up to give away free $100 (75 EUR) gift cards. Symantec experts came across one of these scams and determined that the crooks that launched them have put a great effort into making ev...

5 April 2012
09:14 GMT

Cybercriminals Dupe Users with Popular Brand Names, Experts Say

Security solutions provider GFI Software released the VIPRE Report for March 2012 to highlight the most popular cybercriminal operations and the pieces of malware they rely on to ensure success. One of the first observations made by GFI experts is that fraudsters still leverage popular brand names to spread maliciou...

5 April 2012
07:08 GMT

Fake BBB Email Helps Fraudsters Steal $100,000 (€75,000) from Firm

Some time ago we’ve reported that a malicious email purporting to originate from the Better Business Bureau (BBB) was landing in inboxes, urging recipients to download an alleged complaint that in reality contained a nasty piece of malware. As it turns out, there are already a number of victims, one of which lo...

5 April 2012
04:51 GMT

Beware of Siberian Husky Puppy Scams

Internet security experts warn that an old email scam is hitting inboxes again, offering Siberian Husky puppies to anyone who promises to take good care of them. Commtouch Café reports that the shady email advertises six puppies, three male and three female, all “registered from multi-championship blood...

4 April 2012
04:33 GMT

Fake Australian Apple Store Emails Target Credit Card Data

An email titled “Apple Discount Card – 100 AU$” may land in the inboxes of unsuspecting users, falsely informing them that they can win credit worth $100 (75 EUR) if they purchase a $9 (6.75 EUR) Apple Discount Card. The email, provided by Hoax Slayer, looks something like this: Dear Apple Custome...

4 April 2012
03:59 GMT

“US Airways Online Check-In” Emails Serve ZeuS

Internet users are advised to be on the lookout for malicious emails that purport to come from US Airways, bearing information regarding an online ticket reservation. Kaspersky Lab experts inform that the phony notifications are well designed, even displaying a link to the company’s privacy policy. However, b...

4 April 2012
03:00 GMT

Malware Advertised as Checks from Christian Liberty Financial

Security experts warn that spam emails which allegedly come from an organization called Christian Liberty Financial are actually part of a clever scheme designed to spread the malicious Bredo Trojan. According to Sophos researchers, the emails urge the recipients to download a bank check that’s contained in th...

2 April 2012
10:12 GMT

"Draw Something" Scams Circulating on Twitter

Security researchers warn Twitter users to be on the lookout for survey scams which are advertised by fake Draw Something accounts. As many people already know, with great power comes great responsibility and with great popularity come, well, cybercriminals and their malicious operations. Sophos experts found a num...

30 March 2012
03:41 GMT

Beware of “Halifax Online Service Message” Phishing Scam

It’s not uncommon for Halifax bank customers to be targeted by phishers. Currently, a new scam email is making the rounds, informing recipients on the introduction of a new online banking authentication procedure starting with March 23, 2012. Bearing the subject “IMPORTANT - Halifax Online Service Messag...

26 March 2012
13:51 GMT

Crooks Replicate eBay Verification Emails to Steal Accounts

Cybercriminals have taken the body of a legitimate eBay identity verification email and began using it in a malicious campaign designed to steal the accounts of unsuspecting users. “You're signing in from a computer we're not familiar with. That's no problem, but we need to take a few moments ju...

26 March 2012
07:54 GMT

Bigpond Users Warned of Account Limitation in Phishing Scam

After the Australian telecommunication company Telstra suffered a data breach in December 2011, cybercrooks launched phishing campaigns that targeted the account credentials of the firms’ Bigpond customers. Right after the incident took place, phishers started sending ADLS service cancelation notices and now t...

26 March 2012
03:14 GMT

Russian Registrar Accused of Refusing to Take Down Malicious Domains

Spamhaus Project, the anti-spam organization that last year was accused of blackmail by a Dutch ISP, names a Russian registrar called NAUNET of knowingly harboring cybercriminals by not taking down their malicious domains. In the past several months Spamhaus has been fighting a never-ending battle against spam sourc...

24 March 2012
06:25 GMT

Business Owners Targeted by Malware-Serving IRS Emails

Malicious emails that rely on the reputation of the Internal Revenue Service (IRS) are highly common and with each tax season cybercrooks get out their old emails from the closet and start sending them to unsuspecting business owners. Sophos representatives report that new variants of the classic IRS scam are curren...

23 March 2012
04:54 GMT

BBB and LinkedIn Email Lure Users to Compromised WordPress Sites

Emails that purport to originate from the Better Business Bureau (BBB) or LinkedIn urge users to click on links that point to compromised WordPress sites which serve the infamous BlackHole Exploit Kit. Trend Micro experts revealed that the BBB emails notify the recipient that a complaint has been filed against them...

22 March 2012
08:47 GMT

Malware-Spreading DHL Tracking Notifications Making the Rounds

Back in October 2011 security experts warned users that fake DHL Tracking Notifications were landing in inboxes, trying to spread a malicious Trojan. Now, Sophos warns that the same emails are still being sent by cybercriminals. Apparently originating from the notice@dhl.be email address, the email urges users to do...

21 March 2012
09:05 GMT

GTradeInc Spam SMSs Sign Up Users for Premium Services

Individuals from Finland are warned that a SMS spam campaign launched by GTradeInc is making the rounds, claiming to subscribe recipients to unsolicited premium services. F-Secure informs that CERT-FI released an advisory regarding these scam messages that are apparently received even by users who didn’t provi...

20 March 2012
10:19 GMT

Gmail Now Explains Why It Picked a Spam Message, So You Can Stay Informed

Email spam filters have really gotten better in recent years. Compared to past years, few spammy messages make it into our inbox. Granted, some still do and some legitimate messages get labeled as spam, but no system is perfect. Still, while you may be assured that your spam filter does a good job, you may still wan...

20 March 2012
08:11 GMT

Fake Italian Post Office Emails Target Credit Card Details

A phishing scam that has been targeting Italians in the past period tries to dupe Internet users into handing over private information, including credit card details that can later be used to perform fraudulent transactions. Bitdefender experts found that the scam starts with an email that urges recipients to verify...

20 March 2012
05:43 GMT

Credit Card Details Targeted in LAN Airlines Phishing Campaign

The latest phishing expedition relies on spam emails allegedly sent by LAN Airlines representatives. The notification claims that the change of flight request has been rejected because the company doesn’t have a contract with Mastercard. Internet Storm Center (ICS) informs that the phony email requests a VISA ...

19 March 2012
04:39 GMT

Hackers, Spambots and Other Non-Humans Make 51% of Site Traffic

Many website owners are unaware that Google Analytics and other traffic monitoring tools don’t take into consideration the “non-human” visitors. The most worrying part of this observation is that the 51% of the traffic is not seen in reports and it can be represented by hackers, bots and other spyin...

19 March 2012
04:16 GMT

3,452 Accounts Leaked from CricFire

Cricket fans who possess accounts on cricfire.com are advised to immediately change their passwords and monitor their inboxes for any malicious messages that may come their way. The warning is a result of a data breach that affected the site recently. A hacker called Le0n B3lm0nt published a large part of the websit...

15 March 2012
10:55 GMT

Google Reveals Some Ways It Keeps Bad Ads Out and Why It Sometimes Fails

Google's title as the largest ad company in the world, or at least as the largest ad network online, is both a blessing and a curse. On the one hand, advertisers and users are going to trust it more, on the other, more people are going to try to abuse it. Google regards ad quality with as much importance as sea...

15 March 2012
08:11 GMT

Crooks Use Compromised Emails for Bank Fraud

Cybercriminals found a clever and somewhat unsophisticated way of gaining access to the bank accounts of unsuspecting Internet users. They started relying on compromised email accounts to send messages to bank personnel, requesting fund transfers. Security journalist Brian Krebs informs that even though in many case...

13 March 2012
10:29 GMT

FC Barcelona Fans Targeted in Facebook Phishing Scam

Cybercriminals devised a clever way to steal Facebook login credentials from unsuspecting users. They designed a phishing site that urges potential victims to enter their social media credentials in order to gain access to a lot of great content related to FC Barcelona. FC Barcelona is one of the most successful foo...

13 March 2012
07:24 GMT

Super Tuesday and Anti-Putin Emails Serve Malware

Before, after and during an important election campaign cybercriminals start to send out emails to unsuspecting internauts with the purpose of spreading their malicious operations. Security experts found that American’s are targeted by a Super Tuesday malware attack and Russians by one that relies on anti-Putin...

8 March 2012
13:21 GMT

Spam Campaigns Start Relying on “Pin It”

Pinterest has grown very much in popularity in the past few months, reaching around 10 million users. This didn’t go unnoticed by spammers and other cybercriminals who started relying on Pin it, the equivalent of Facebook’s Like, in their malicious campaigns. Zscaler researchers came across a couple of ...

6 March 2012
14:31 GMT

“Pharmaceutical Interface for Google” Hides Rogue Pharmacy

Rogue online pharmacies, sometimes known as Canadian pharmacies, are still recording a great success, fact proven by the large number of spam emails that advertise these types of sites. GFI experts came across another variant of the phony messages that promote a so-called Google Pharmacy. Google Health met its doom ...

6 March 2012
10:44 GMT

Starbucks Giveaway Scam Hits Pinterest

Giveaway scams are not uncommon on social networks, especially popular ones such as Facebook or Twitter, but now there’s another playground on which cybercriminals can spread their malicious campaigns. Pinterest has become very popular, especially after some big names signed up. Now, the millions of account h...

3 March 2012
07:20 GMT

“Test and Keep Free iPad 3” Scam Spreads Via Referral Links

At the end of February we’ve seen that “Free iPad 3” scams have surfaced on social media websites and now Trend Micro researchers analyzed a few new variants of these plots. Unlike other versions which involved clickjacking, one of the later variants simply advertises a contest. The Test & Keep an ...

3 March 2012
06:04 GMT

Facebook to Require Social Security Numbers from Users, Hoax

After the hoax that claimed Facebook would be shut down soon because its CEO Mark Zuckerberg was too stressed, and the one which warned users that they have to pay for their membership, the latest hoax notifies the social media site’s customers that starting with April 2012 they will have to provide Social Secu...

2 March 2012
06:03 GMT

Google+ Hides Spam Comments Even Deeper

Google+ has been relatively spam free, in the sense that its anti-spam mechanisms have been doing a good job. But there's still spam on the social network and, even if it's detected, it's still annoying if only for the authors of a post. Now Google is making it even less of a hassle by making comment...

1 March 2012
09:41 GMT

Jeremy Lin Malware Exploits Vulnerabilities in Microsoft Office

Trend Micro security experts identified a new spam campaign that’s relying on the growing popularity on NBA star Jeremy Lin. The malicious emails that spread the infection are actually part of the LURID campaign that mainly targeted victims from Eastern Europe and Central Asia, including former Soviet Union c...

1 March 2012
04:36 GMT

“The Beatles Re-Mastered 2012” Served Via Spam

One of the latest spam campaigns advertises a couple of DVDs that allegedly contain all the songs ever made by The Beatles. While there may be nothing malicious about these emails, purchasing the “Box Set 2012” is similar to buying a Rolex watch that only costs 99.99 from a shady site. Graham Cluley repo...

27 February 2012
07:32 GMT

TwitterHealth Messages Serve Rogue Pharmacy Sites

Internet users who may be concerned for Twitter’s Health may be given a medicine that they certainly don’t want. A spam campaign that comes with the “TwitterHealth alert” subject is designed to lead recipients to a rogue pharmacy that commercializes shady products. The message, provided by MX...

24 February 2012
03:44 GMT

Wall Street Journal’s Facebook Page Spammed by Anonymous

After The Wall Street Journal published an article in which the National Security Agency (NSA) expressed its concerns regarding the potential threat posed by Anonymous to the United States’ national power grid, the hackers and their supporters started spamming the media company’s official Facebook page wi...

23 February 2012
10:36 GMT

Beware of "Click Speed" Tests on Facebook

It seems that scammers are not content with the fact that each Facebook customer that falls for their schemes only clicks on one Like button. Now, they’ve come up with a new way of tricking users into clicking on a large number of Likes without giving it much thought. Bitdefender experts provide the details re...

23 February 2012
05:59 GMT

Over 75 Million Unique Malware Samples Identified in Q4 2011

Security solutions provider McAfee released its Fourth Quarter 2011 report to reveal the details of the threat landscape that targeted computing devices in the last months of the year that passed. The figures show that there were more than 75 million unique malware samples, this being the number that the company es...

23 February 2012
03:20 GMT

“Your Changelog” Emails Serve Iframe Malware (Updated)

Sophos researchers identified a series of spam emails that promise the recipient a changelog, but instead they deliver a piece of malware that’s often found on compromised websites. The confusing emails, bearing the subject “Your Changelog”, come in various forms, but none of them give any indicati...

22 February 2012
09:25 GMT

FBI Warns of Robert English Soccer Academy Scams

The FBI’s office in Knoxville issued a warning to inform people on the existence of a scam email that invites recipients to enroll to the Robert English Soccer Academy, an allegedly newly-founded club. Individuals who fall for the plot are requested to provide tons of sensitive data that can be used by the cybe...

21 February 2012
09:24 GMT

RIAA Copyright Violations Spread Malware

An email apparently coming from the Recording Industry Association of America (RIAA) informs the recipient that his IP was identified as distributing copyrighted content. In reality, the string of emails is part of a malicious campaign designed to spread an information-stealing Trojan. MalwareSurvival informs that t...

21 February 2012
04:54 GMT

Fraudsters Make Money by Promising Ex-Girlfriend Videos

Cybercrooks are doing everything in their power to dupe unsuspecting internauts into clicking on survey sites that earn them large amounts of money. The latest Facebook scam that's been seen on Walls implies a video that allegedly features the victim’s ex-girlfriend. Sophos came across a variant of this p...

20 February 2012
10:58 GMT

Facebook Gold Membership Status Scam Promises Millions

The latest 419 scam that circulates via email dupes recipients into thinking that they won a “gold membership status” on Facebook, which qualifies them for a $2.5 million (1.7 million EUR) prize offered by the social media company. Hoax Slayer informs that the potential victims are not only requested to ...

20 February 2012
04:20 GMT

Malware Spreads as Microsoft Silverlight Content Sent by Facebook

Researchers from Barracuda Labs discovered a series of malicious emails that allegedly come from Facebook and bear an attachment that’s allegedly available only if Microsoft Silverlight is installed. The phony message claims that the user’s account information “has been changed,” but provides...

17 February 2012
10:41 GMT

CULT Order Confirmation Steals BoA, Steam and Facebook Accounts

A Panda Security researcher came across a malicious email that purports to come from CULT, the popular online clothing store, alerting the recipient about a purchase being made with his (or her) credit card. Bearing the subject “CULT Order Confirmation (CULTXXXX)” the email comes from a spoofed email add...

16 February 2012
08:39 GMT


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