Beware! Spammers may spoil your Valentine's Day
A report by networking giant Cisco suggests that spam accounts for nearly 200 billion e-mails sent each day. Gift gold this Valentine's Day | Hottest gadgets for Valentine
By PTI |
NEW DELHI: The Valentine's Day bug has bitten spammers too as they send out more spams to con people of their money and hack their computers with words like Valentine, cupid, love and gift in the subject line.
As an unknowing user clicks on the malicious link in the mail, he is directed to a fraud website and his computer is 'attacked' and the spammer gains access to the data.
The infected computer, called a 'Zombie' or a BOT, can be used for infecting other computers as well as other illegal activities without the knowledge of the user.
"Precious data can be lost and the computer can be used for illegal purposes as well, since the computer can be remotely accessed by the hacker," Symantec Country Sales Manager (India-Consumer Products and Solutions) Gaurav Kanwal told reporters.
A study by Symantec shows there is an increased activity around occasions like Valentine's Day as people shop online for gifts and flowers.
Also, for something like the Obama campaign, spammers used catchy phrases like 'Our President-In His Own Words', 'Limited edition Obama coin now available to you' or 'Obama caught hot' to lure users to such websites.
"Spammers use what is the latest -- be it Valentine's, Day, New Year or even Obama's presidential campaign. Each of these spam emails contained a hyperlink that, when clicked on, directed the user to a web page that looked very similar to the official Obama-Biden campaign site," he said.
The fraud site tries to install malware onto the computer (somewhat like hacking) and the infected computer can be also be used to infect other computers, he added.
Spammers are now also using popular services like iTunes to lure customers. Internet content security provider Trend Micro said there are instances, where messages posed as 'an invoice from iTunes' in the e-mail's subject line.
The e-mail, however, contained advertisement for a 'special Valentine's day sale' with links actually leading to a fake Canadian pharmacy website.
As an unknowing user clicks on the malicious link in the mail, he is directed to a fraud website and his computer is 'attacked' and the spammer gains access to the data.
The infected computer, called a 'Zombie' or a BOT, can be used for infecting other computers as well as other illegal activities without the knowledge of the user.
"Precious data can be lost and the computer can be used for illegal purposes as well, since the computer can be remotely accessed by the hacker," Symantec Country Sales Manager (India-Consumer Products and Solutions) Gaurav Kanwal told reporters.
A study by Symantec shows there is an increased activity around occasions like Valentine's Day as people shop online for gifts and flowers.
Also, for something like the Obama campaign, spammers used catchy phrases like 'Our President-In His Own Words', 'Limited edition Obama coin now available to you' or 'Obama caught hot' to lure users to such websites.
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"Spammers use what is the latest -- be it Valentine's, Day, New Year or even Obama's presidential campaign. Each of these spam emails contained a hyperlink that, when clicked on, directed the user to a web page that looked very similar to the official Obama-Biden campaign site," he said.
The fraud site tries to install malware onto the computer (somewhat like hacking) and the infected computer can be also be used to infect other computers, he added.
Spammers are now also using popular services like iTunes to lure customers. Internet content security provider Trend Micro said there are instances, where messages posed as 'an invoice from iTunes' in the e-mail's subject line.
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The e-mail, however, contained advertisement for a 'special Valentine's day sale' with links actually leading to a fake Canadian pharmacy website.
"iTunes garnered an estimated $3.34 billion in sales for 2008, and the numbers for early 2009 are quite promising too. With the amount of success and the large number of customers, this pretty much explains the use of iTunes to lure users to pharma sites," Trend Micro Country Manager (India and SAARC) Amit Nath said.
The spams also contain viruses and worms like VBS_LOVEMONKEY, PE_LOVESONG.998, WORM_LOVELORN and WORM_BAGLE. But VBS_LOVELETTER is one of the most destructive viruses to have ever hit online users, and the costliest as well, causing about USD 5-10-bn damage, Nath said.
Love still maintains its status as an effective social engineering technique. According to Trend Micro analysis, 24 per cent of the manually detected malicious URLs (phishing sites, malware download sites) during the Valentine's months of January and February contained the string love, or were crafted to have references to the word.
Trend Micro has also analysed mobile phone malware called SYMBOS_BESELO.A that spreads through Bluetooth and Multimedia Messaging Service (MMS) and uses file names beauty, jpg, love.rm, and sex.mp3.
What started just as a fun activity has now turned into serious business and millions of dollars are lost to such fraud websites.
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"There are banking sites that look like the original ones and people unknowingly key in their details, after which the spammer has the person's bank details and can easily launder money from the account," Kanwal said. A report by networking giant Cisco suggests that spam accounts for nearly 200 billion e-mails sent each day.
While the United States is the biggest source at 17.2 per cent, other countries like Turkey (9.2 per cent), Russia (8 per cent), Canada (4.7 per cent), Brazil (4.1 per cent), India (3.5 per cent), Poland (3.4 per cent), South Korea (3.3 per cent), Germany and the United Kingdom (2.9 per cent each) also account for a sizeable number of spam mails.
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