Sophos, a world leader in protecting businesses against spam and
viruses, has warned computer users to be wary of unsolicited emails
offering training and well paid jobs in the financial sector
following sighting of a devious scam.
Sophos researchers have discovered a spam campaign, masterminded
by a group of Russian spammers, which poses as a training course
which will lead to a job with the financial institution Credit
Suisse. Its intent is to defraud innocent computer users out of
their savings.
The emails, which claim to come from Credit Suisse, offer a free
two week training course over the web. Once the course is complete,
the email claims, trainees will have "graduated".
However, the emails and associated website are an elaborate
fake; and users who innocently sign-up for the course may discover
they are asked to transfer money from their own bank accounts as
one of the "lessons".
"Scammers are getting more and more sophisticated in the way in
which they attempt to steal money from innocent internet users,"
said Graham Cluley, senior technology consultant for Sophos. "This
campaign involves luring people who may wish to generate an income
from home into signing up for a fake training course that may teach
them a very expensive lesson."
A typical scam email looks as follows:
Sophos analysts believe the spam campaign and website are being
run by a group of spammers based in Russia. At the time of writing,
the bogus website featured in the scam email is no longer
available.
Sophos recommends companies protect themselves with a consolidated solution which can defend businesses
from the threats of both spam and viruses.
More than 100 million users in 150 countries rely on Sophos as the best protection against complex threats and data loss. Sophos is committed to providing security and data protection solutions that are simple to manage, deploy and use and that deliver the industry's lowest total cost of ownership. Sophos offers award-winning encryption, endpoint security, web, email, and network access control solutions backed by SophosLabs - a global network of threat intelligence centers. With more than two decades of experience, Sophos is regarded as a leader in security and data protection by top analyst firms and has received many industry awards.
Sophos is headquartered in Boston, US and Oxford, UK. More information is available at www.sophos.com.