Watch out for phony Valentine’s Day scams
Every year phishers and Trojan planters use Valentine’s Day email as a way to fool people into downloading malware. PC World reports:
Multiple security vendors, including MX Logic Inc., Trend Micro Inc., and Panda Security, have issued alerts about new Valentine’s Day-themed spam campaigns that try to dupe users into installing the Waledec bot.
Subject lines for the spam, said Sam Masiello , vice president of information security at MX Logic, are “short and sweet,” and include “Me and You,” “In Your Arms” and “With all my love.” From the spam, users who browse to the embedded link reach a site with a dozen hearts, any one of which download an executable file when clicked.
The bad guys have basically ruined email as a medium for sending greeting cards. Remember, the “From” line in an email is very easily faked. If you investigate the header of every email greeting that you get, you might possibly winnow out any legitimate messages but how many people want to go and use Whois to look up the IP of every email? And even then, you could get burned. All you can really find out is the ISP and the scammers are good at finding open SMTP relays and planting mail bots. Your old girlfriend’s computer might actually send you an infected greeting without her knowing anything about it (or wanting anything to do with you).
So beware any email Valentines. It’s sad but the crooks have taken over.
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