September Round Up
For the past couple of years there has been a significant shift in the way malware is distributed, away from email attachments to links in emails and so called drive by download from compromised websites.
The past few weeks however has seen a return to the email attachments. The secret to the success of any malware is the social engineering used. How convincing can it be to entice the user to open the attachment or click on the link.
The latest trend is spam out an official looking email proporting to be from a well known brand such as UPS. Politely informing the recipient that a delivery was unsuccessful.
The malware authors obviously found that this worked, and recycled it regularly and tried news reports, invoices, notices of suspension of internet access.
Examples of the evolution of these campaigns are :
French version of UPS malware
Airline Ticket invoice
Statement of Fees
Fedex tracking malware
And so on…
What’s next? I can make a few predictions, but one things for sure, the malware authors aren’t going to give up anytime soon
Posted on September 26th, 2008 by Mark Harris, VP of SophosLabsFiled under: General
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