Security Response

He was seen several years ago. Now, he is back with the name “Don Gunshot”!

Luring people with promises of huge sums of money in return for bogus favors is the classic method adopted by the Nigerian/419 type of spammers. It is one of the oldest forms of spamming; very rudimentary, yet creatively lethal. This revisited scam tactic uses coercion to force people to pay up or else they will (apparently) face dire consequences. From a lighter point of view, however, it is a bit more humorous than scary.

 
The above email is indeed a perfect example of a scammer trying to blackmail someone they don’t know from Adam. The spammer does not know you, but he pretends to have received blood money to kill you. He blackmails you with threats of dire consequences if you even try to whisper the secrets explained in the mail. Forget the police, and if you dare to try and tell...

Have you ever received an email from an unknown person offering you an exorbitant amount of money and asking for your personal information in return? Well, that is exactly what a “419 scam” is!

419 spam, also known as Nigerian spam, is named after the Nigerian penal code, section 4-1-9. The most common forms of 419 spam are fake business proposals, fake fund transfers, and email lottery winning notifications—all of which include the spammers’ requests for personal information, such as name, account number, phone number, email address, bank details, etc.

419 spam is often seen in English, German, Spanish, and some other European languages, but spammers are now targeting Asian countries because of the increased Internet user base and widespread broadband infrastructure.

For the first time, Symantec has observed 419 spam created in Hindi using Devnagari script. This is a big paradigm shift where 419 spam is concerned. Hindi is a widely...

Communication in the today’s world is dominated by email, instant messaging, and social networking. However, for making any formal statement or announcement, hard-copy letters are still sent using postal services. In both mediums, unwanted, unsolicited letters are not new; however, it may still be surprising if a spam message is sent over using postal services - somewhat low tech, but perhaps most effective way to bypass all kinds of online security. In a letter shared by a recipient, we found familiar text seen in emails associated with scams. We confirmed the hard-copy letter to be a 419 scam.

Here is the scanned copy of the letter (where the identity and address of the recipient have been blurred):

Text inside the letter has everything that we commonly see with email scams, except that we do not find any reply-to email addresses. Also, the scammer stresses that recipients must only fax the...

Symantec has blogged previously about spammers exploiting the recent catastrophic situation in Japan. Since then, Symantec has observed additional variations in spam attacks in which the spammers are continuing to exploit the tragedy, even as the earthquake and tsunami relief efforts are in progress. Similar to what we have seen in the past, virus attacks in the form of messages containing links to images in the message body were observed in the third week of March. Such attacks, along with scam emails, are usually prevalent after such disasters have occurred. The subject line and screenshot of a sample message body of the virus attack can be seen below.

Subject: Novo tsunami atinge Sendai e Japao declara estado de emergencia em usina nuclear
[Subject: New tsunami hits Japan Sendai and declares state of emergency in nuclear plant]

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