Experts at SophosLabs™, Sophos's global
network of virus, spyware and spam analysis centers, have warned of
a spammed-out email that pretends to come from a professional
hitman, hired to kill the recipient, but are really interested in
stealing money.
The emails claim that the recipient has been stalked by a hired
assassin for 10 days, but that the hitman is prepared to drop the
contract if he is paid a total of $80,000. Upon receiving an
initial advance payment of $20,000 the hitman claims that he will
produce taped evidence of the contract to kill the reader of the
email.
Part of the email, which start with a cheery greeting of "Good
day" and can have a subject line of "Read this to be safe and a new
life in this new year", reads:
Do not contact the police or F.B.I. or
try to send a copy of this to them, because if you do i will know,
and might be pushed to do what i have being paid to do, beside,
this is the first time I turned out to be a betrayer in my
job.
According to Sophos experts, once a victim has been drawn into
the scam, requests can be made from the fraudster for private
information which may lead to requests for money, stolen
identities, and financial theft.
The email claims to come from a professional
assassin.
"This is surely one of the sickest phishes yet seen - the
intention of this email is quite clearly to frighten the recipient
into coughing up a substantial amount of money or, at the very
least, their bank account details," said Graham Cluley, senior
technology consultant for Sophos. "Innocent, vulnerable people
could be scared into believing that the contents of the email are
truthful, while the not-so-innocent are arguably even more likely
to be hoodwinked. It may be hugely unnerving to receive such
threats, but the only way to stop the distribution of these
messages is for users to stop responding."
Sophos continues to recommend that all organizations protect
their email with an integrated security
solution to thwart spam, spyware and malware threats.
Sophos is headquartered in Boston, US and Oxford, UK. More information is available at www.sophos.com.