The International Cricket Council (ICC) Champions Trophy 2013 is currently being held in England and Wales. The group matches are already in progress and the grand finale will be held on June 23. In the past, Symantec observed various spam emails targeting the ICC World T20 and the Cricket World Cup. As expected, we have seen ICC Champions Trophy 2013 scam emails flowing into the Symantec Probe Network.

Nigerian scammers have reached out through text based emails, .doc files, and PDF files. Here, the scam message is attached as a .doc file called ICC UPDATE.doc. The email says that the reader has won a brand new Camry Solara worth 85,000 Euro. This is typical of 419 scams. The scam email explains that the winning email address was obtained in a raffle and was sent to the final drawing conducted at...

Contributor: Vivek Krishnamurthi

The International Dance Competition “Dance Grand Prix Europe” is set to begin June 12 and will be hosted in Spain. The purpose of the competition is to showcase all the top dancers from various dance schools and this major event attracts choreographic talent from around the world. Spammers also don’t want to miss this event and the opportunity to circulate a scam.
 

Figure 1. Dance Grand Prix Europe 2013 spam
 

To grab the reader’s attention, the spam email reveals some appealing facts about the event along with "only a little fee" required but no additional charges for participation in the event. Clicking the URL will automatically redirect the user to a website containing a bogus...

The Dragon Boat Festival, also known as the Duanwu Festival, is an important traditional holiday that has been celebrated by Chinese people as well as other people in East Asian societies for nearly 2,000 years. It is a day for people to drive away epidemics and evil spirits in summer by holding a series of symbolic activities because in ancient times, summer was considered to be a season of bugs, snakes, and fleas that could cause serious diseases.

There are several traditions followed on this day, such as holding a dragon boat race, eating sticky rice dumplings wrapped in bamboo (Zong zi), drinking realgar wine (Xionghuangjiu), and wearing perfumed medicine bags. Many of these activities involve some sort of commercial component—and spammers will never miss a good opportunity to make a profit.

This year, the Dragon Boat Festival is going to be celebrated on June 12, 2013. In the lead-up to this...

Contributor: Binny Kuriakose

Anonymity disguised as freedom of expression and lack of clear cut laws makes cyberspace murky from a security point of view. Countries are waking up and realizing that there is a need for laws which enable authorities to catch and punish cyberspace miscreants; however, these miscreants are very crafty.

Spammers are known to use ingenious methods to peddle spam and lately they have even begun using antispam laws themselves in an effort to spearhead spam attacks. This blog is not about analyzing the effectiveness of antispam laws; it is about how spammers are quoting the laws in emails in order to make the spam look legitimate.

There are some “grey area” emails, which fall somewhere between spam and legitimate mail, and sometimes there can be something very inconspicuous in the mail that can tip the balance in the mind of a recipient. Quoting antispam law in the body of the email and claiming that the email...