La Piazza Blog - PANDA SECURITY SUPPORT

Posted by David San José September 22, 2009

On checking your mail you could find messages with enticing names of famous people, e.g. “Angelina Jolie porno Video Free”, “Barack Obamaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaa!!!!!!!”, “Brad Pitt naked video!!!”, “Michael Jackson free video!!!”, etc.

Sometimes the email subject begins with popular social network names; “Facebook….!!!”,  “Twitter…!!!”.

The common feature is that they use interesting subjects to temp users into opening them. From then on, the door is open to E-crime, which could install unauthorized programs on your computer.

Here is an example of the spam detected, related to Angelina Jolie:

Hackers are becoming increasingly crafty. For example, who wouldn’t open an email which allegedly contains flight tickets? or an invoice? Cyber-criminals try and get as close to victims’ daily lives as possible (at work or at home).   

Once open, these emails are designed as Trojans that steal information from your computer without you noticing.

To prevent these emails from accessing your mailbox you must install an antivirus and enable the automatic updates. This way, Panda Security protects you against identified E-crime.

This post has been written together with PandaLabs which has a mailbox you can send suspicious emails to (virus@pandasecurity.com) and will inform you whether it is spam or not.

David San José

Posted by Alvaro, July 8, 2009

Who by now doesn´t know that Michael Jackson, the king of pop is dead? This post will not debate the circumstances surrounding this unfortunate event, but we would like to warn you about spammers who are sending new spam on the occasion of Jackson´s death.

As you all know, SPAM is defined as unsolicited mail, usually of commercial nature, sent in huge, even massive quantities with a detrimental effect on the person receiving these emails.

Malware creators are fast and exploit any event, as it is the death of the great pop icon, in order to modify the appearance of their spam mails.

In this particular campaign, different types of SPAM can be found. They all, apparently, contain privileged information regarding the death or even assassination of Michael Jackson.

The messages invite the recipient to view videos or pictures related to a possible plot to assassin the pop star, an appealling subject for many users.

During the tests performed on these messages, several rootkits and backdoors filtering users´ bank data have been detected.

We highly recommend to keep the anti-spam protection of your antivirus updated in order to protect yourself from these attacks.