Security Response

Thanks to Anand Muralidharan for their assistance with this research.

Televison channels across the world are set to be at the 14th International Exhibition and Forum, World Content Show, held Feb 7- 9, 2012, in Russia. The exhibition showcases the latest technologies and trends in the TV and telecommunication industry.

This techno-fair will be attended in large numbers by leading media businesses, and spammers don’t want to miss the opportunity to circulate spam around the event. In a bid to catch the reader’s attention, one such spam email reveals some appealing facts about the event, such as Interactive Elements, Prize Drawings, Performance of Popular Leader/Star, and Colorful Musical Concerts.

Here is an example of this Russian spam observed by Symantec:

Here are the subject...

At 3 AM, on February 6, 2012, Symantec Security Response observed spam carrying malicious links which target the upcoming tax season. The spam volume spiked between 6 AM and 1 PM, identifying over 200 unique URLs which lead to a Blackhole toolkit.

A Blackhole toolkit compromises the machine by targeting various vulnerabilities on the victim's machine. Symantec protects our customers with multiple-layer protection of antispam, antivirus, and IPS signatures. The payload downloaded from the malicious website is detected as Trojan.Zbot, for instance, and IPS detects this web attack as “Web Attack: Blackhole Toolkit Website 14” and “...

Contributor: Anand Muralidharan

Recently, the death of Libyan leader Muammar Gaddafi triggered a malware attack which Symantec previously blogged about. We have observed spammers' continued delight with this news event through the sending of malicious attack and 419 spam messages.

In the spam targeting residents of Brazil, a video showing Gaddafi asking for mercy and containing disturbing images also carries malware. By clicking the link provided in the email, users actually download a malicious executable file. Symantec has identifed this threat as Trojan.Ransomlock!gen4.
 

The email...

Contributor: Christopher Mendes

When stalwarts pass away the world mourns their loss, tributes flow and emotions run high. Whenever we lose a legendary figure, their death brings shock or grief and people are hungry for any and every available piece of information about the "How" and the "Why" and the "When" related to the death of these important figures.

We studied the aftermath of these icons’ passing and the eulogy written by spammers. The spammer’s sole motive is to use incidents to compromise weak systems. On further examination of the collected data we traced a predictable pattern, the details of which are given below: