Who was the one who held you in their arms when you let out your first cry in the world? Did you say “doctor?” Well, that may be true in some cases, but the more obvious answer is “mother.”

Dating back to ancient Greece, mankind held a festival worshiping Cybele, mother of the Greek gods. Mother’s Day is now celebrated around the world, mainly sometime in March, April, or May. The most common date is the second Sunday in May when, in most countries, mothers receive flowers and gifts in celebration of the day. How can spammers miss this special occasion when people are surfing the Internet to try and dig up a sweet surprise to express love and gratitude towards their mothers?

The following are Mother’s Day spam samples that Symantec has recently observed. There is a range of product spam, including flowers, watches, gift cards, and diet products. This latest spam campaign involved both dictionary and domain attack techniques,...

As we have seen with many major events in the past, news of the British Royal Wedding is currently being used by cyber criminals to bolster their spam campaigns and push rogue antivirus software through black hat search engine optimization (SEO) techniques.
 

Spam campaigns

We have blogged previously about “snowshoe” spammers targeting the upcoming British Royal Wedding of Prince William and Kate Middleton. Spam email messages advertising a replica of Princess Diana’s engagement ring that were observed in February are still making the rounds on the Internet, and the eve of the royal wedding is now upon us. Furthermore, as we had anticipated, we have recently observed additional spam campaigns making use of this significant event to promote various products.

In one such recent spam campaign, email promoting a "...

As I recently have sent off my tax forms in preparation for the US Federal tax deadline on April 18 this year, a recent phishing scam piqued my interest. This attack is taking advantage of the new tax year beginning for folks in the UK on April 6, 2011.

The message in question was being sent in the name of the HMRC, Her Majesty’s Revenue and Customs, in an attempt to lure users into divulging bank account information with the lure of unclaimed tax overpayment money.

The path of the message had an international flavor, beginning at what looks like a computer at a hotel business center based in the US, then going through servers in New Zealand, then back to the US through the mail servers of a large free email service, and then presumably into the inbox of a user based in the UK.

The URLs in the message also contributed to this internationalized scam by utilizing a domain based in Serbia which would redirect users when they unsuspectingly clicked on the...

In the past couple of months, Symantec observed phishing sites that spoofed online FIFA games. The legitimate game is played by forming a team of footballers purchased with coins. The more games you win with your team, the more coins you gain. The popular and more skilled footballers demand a higher number of coins.

The phishing campaign was launched with fake offers of free coins to lure online FIFA players. One of the phishing sites was purportedly from a player who sympathized with end users who struggle with the game. The phishing site contained a message from this fictitious player which expressed the embarrassment one goes through for having a team of low profile footballers. The message explained that the site would help players generate free coins so that they could form a more expensive team of footballers. The phishing site prompted users to login with their email address and password to gain up to 10,000 free coins per day. The phishing pages featured popular...