14 DAY TRIAL // Security researchers warn about scams leveraging news of the earthquake that hit the northeast coast of Japan yesterday, leading to renewed fears about the unstable situation at the Fukushima Daiichi nuclear plant.
A 7.1 magnitude earthquake believed to be an aftershock of the one that generated a devastating tsunami on March 11, struck at 11:32pm yesterday 50km off the coast of Miyagi prefecture.
A tsunami warning was issued immediately, as officials feared 1 meter high waves, but this proved to be a false alarm and it was later lifted.
Everyone's attention then focused towards the damaged nuclear plant, but its administrators reported no signs of new problems.
Nevertheless, cybercriminals did not miss the chance to capitalize on people's interest into the incident.
Symantec reports that Portuguese-language scam emails originating in Brazil were detected soon after the quake struck.
One if them had a subject of "New tsunami hits Japan Sendai and declares state of emergency in nuclear plant" and included a video player thumbnail.
Clicking on it prompted users to download an executable file called XAR485849834.exe which was a banking trojan installer.
Another rogue email's subject read "Watch the video recorded at the time of the tsunami in Japan" and contained a link to a malware-spreading site.
Relief scams where people are asked to donate money for victims of the disaster have been going around since after the first earhquake.
"The message lists the various organizations working on relief and recovery in the region. However, towards the end the message, the scammer requests a donation in the form of a wire transfer payment through a popular service.
"The scammer also asks that the sender emails the complete details of the transaction (as mentioned on the receipt) to an email address that quite obviously belongs to the scammers," the Symantec researchers write.
People are advised to obtain their news from reputable sources and to contact relief and humanitarian organizations directly if they want to donate, instead of responding to emails.