Security Response

The Diwali “Festival of Lights” happens in October and is celebrated across India. During this time a large portion of the Indian population will be out shopping and looking for holiday deals. We have started noticing spam messages that offer discounts related to Diwali. Interestingly, spammers are sending the same Internet offers, but in the form of Diwali discounts.

For example, in the spam message selling a database CD of contacts (names, email addresses, ages, phone numbers), “Diwali” is inserted to make it enticing for recipients. As shown in the below sample message, recipients are offered a database CD of 57,000 Indian companies (SMEs).

We also monitored unsolicited offers that we think may ultimately lead to a compilation of opted-out email addresses for the spammers. Most of these spam messages draw email users with cash...

Symantec has observed that most phishing URLs associated with Chinese brands attempt to trick users by stating that they are winners of a great prize. The fake websites declare that the visitors are winners for reasons such as:

1.    Customers of the brand were chosen for a lucky draw and that the customer won the draw.
2.    The brand wishes to thank the customer for their long time commitment by gifting them prizes.
3.    The customer has triumphed in a gaming site of the brand, attaining the highest score.

The phishing site goes on to state that the customer needs to submit confidential information to receive the prize, either to prove his or her identity or for the transfer of the prize money to the customer’s bank account. The following image is an example of a Chinese phishing page for a gaming website. The page says that the customer needs to enter details to prove his or her identity so as to...

A lot can be said with 140 characters. It’s just enough to convey a point, but constricting enough to make things concise. No wonder microblogging sites such as Twitter have become so popular.

Unfortunately one of the limitations here is sharing Web pages with long URLs. In order to address this issue, URL-shortening utilities have grown in popularity on the site. Using such tools allows you to include a link well within the 140-character limit, which will redirect anyone who clicks it to the longer URL and thus the site you wanted to share.

There’s one downside here, from a security point of view—you’ll often have no idea where the link leads until you click it. Clicking any link like this is entirely a security leap of faith. Unfortunately malware authors have caught on to this and are currently distributing misleading applications using these shortened URLs. Using enticing tweets and commonly used twitter search terms, their goal is to get...

The Chinese Mid-Autumn Festival, also know as the Moon Festival, is one of the major holidays celebrated in Chinese society. It happens on August 15 in the Chinese lunar calendar, which is October 3 on the western calendar this year. Most families will get together to admire the bright full moon and eat mooncakes on this holiday. It is a cultural tradition for friends and family members to send mooncakes and reunite for the holiday.

As we expected, Chinese spammers are capitalizing on this holiday and we have monitored spammers sending out mooncake and gift promotions to mark the day in the past couple of weeks. In the examples below, we observed randomized From lines with a mid-autumn festival related subject line. We anticipate more to come before the holiday.

Sample 1:

From: Randomized email alias
Subject: 中秋礼品解决方案

Translation:

Subject: Moon Festival Gift Solution

Body Translation...