Experts at SophosLabs™, Sophos's global
network of virus, spyware and spam analysis centers, have protected
users against a spam campaign that is attempting to make money for
criminals by inflating the stock price of a cosmetics company.
On Wednesday 21 June, Sophos experts issued protection against a
widespread spam campaign that encouraged users to buy stock in a
company called Southern Cosmetics. The emails, which consisted of
an embedded graphic in an attempt to avoid detection by anti-spam
filters, told recipients that savvy investors would be wise to buy
stock in the company because of business deals it was making with
Naomi LLC, a cosmetics firm endorsed by country music singer Naomi
Judd.
The spam email took the form of a graphic,
encouraging people to buy stock in Southern Cosmetics.
Sophos experts identified the emerging spam campaign, and issued
Genotype protection protect against it and potential future
campaigns which might share similar characteristics.
However, an examination of Southern Cosmetics' share price shows
that there has been a marked increase in trading in the stock since
the spam campaign, and the share price from to a high of 6.6 cents
from its pre-spam campaign low of less than one cent per share.
Southern Cosmetics' stock price rose
dramatically following the spam email.
"Spammers spread short term 'investment advice' in the hope of
pumping a stock enough to offload their own shares at a profit. The
increasing quantity and sophistication of pump-and-dump campaigns
suggests that there is plenty of money to be made," said Graham Cluley, senior
technology consultant for Sophos. "Of course, legitimate investors
are left to bear the after-effects of any eventual stock dump."
Pump and dump stock campaigns work by spammers purchasing stock
at a cheap price and then artificially inflating its price by
encouraging others to purchase more (often by spamming "good news"
about the company to others). The spammers then sell off their
stock at a profit. Sophos experts report that pump and dump stock
campaigns account for approximately 15% of all spam.
Sophos recommends companies protect themselves with a consolidated solution which can defend against 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.