Phishing attacks jeopardize users’ personal information, including banking credentials. The huge gain that Internet miscreants receive from these attacks drives them to think of newer and more effective bait to phish users’ personal data. To carry out their plans, spammers most commonly abuse new security services/features provided by legitimate companies.
When we analyzed spam data from the past few years, we observed that holiday seasons spirit up malware spam campaigns using e-cards, video player downloads or ActiveX download attacks. We have found that greeting card or e-card spam are the most common. Due to this reason spammers are employing this technique in other spam campaigns.
Scammers based in Nigeria have long been known for using legitimate email formats for spreading infamously fraudulent 419 messages. We have already monitored e-card services, social networking invites, and various other services provided on social networking sites. Yet another example is a calendar service being abused for sending scam messages.
In an attempt to conceal spam messages from anti-spam filters, spammers employ various tactics of ill intent. And for that purpose, spammers use obfuscation and/or spoofing techniques, the misuse of brand names, and many other tactics that make it difficult for content filtering to identify the spam message.
Players and sports fans around the globe are already warming up for some of the major tournaments like EPL, Champions League, and the MLB World Series. Various national soccer leagues across Europe, including the famous EPL and Champions League, are kicking off in August. In the United States, baseball fans are eagerly waiting for the MLB World Series, which is scheduled in October.
As excited as I was prior to the release of the sixth film of the Harry Potter series, it proved to be fairly disappointing in terms of the number of spam messages spawned using the book/film title. The latest film, “Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince,” was released worldwide on July 15.
How close can they get to you? So close that they can actually talk to you, no matter where in the world they are located? Nigerian 419 scams are not new and have been a nuisance to email users for years. Traditionally, Nigerian scammers have reached out to email users through text-based emails, Word documents, PDF documents, and are increasingly targeteting social networking sites.
In the United States, Independence Day is a federal holiday celebrated on July 4 that commemorates the adoption of the Declaration of Independence on July 4, 1776, which declared independence from the Kingdom of Great Britain.
