Archive for the ‘Hacker attacks’ Category

We had to look twice at this email, but there are plenty of tell-tale signs that it’s another Russian phishing scam. If you read the full version of this post (click “read more”) you see what really gave the game away — a totally messed up landing page on a scam site with no secure server.

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The problem with this scam email is the attachment — an html page that’s actually a malware script. (Malware is software that has a malicious purpose, like hooking your computer up to a global botnet for sending spam, breaking password encyptions, hiding code that can record all your banking and other secure usernames and passwords — and sending them to the coder who created it — and much more.)

Here are the tell-tale indicators. No recipient name or email address is one of the first red flags.

Yes, Russian crime syndicates are still out there trying to steal your identity, and they keep on doing it because gullible, ignorant, inexperienced, thoughtless people still keep falling for these scams, no matter how blatantly obvious they are.

This inept attempt to provoke you into replying (to bungled masking of Russian scam pages) is glaringly obvious. Delete these on sight.

Today’s mail brought this clumsy phishing attempt aimed at hijacking your webmail account (any webmail account you happen to have, for which you provide the scammer with your username, password, etc).

NO legitimate webmail service will ever ask you to provide this information!

Instead, they’ll ask you to log into your account in the usual way. Even then, be wary of any log-in link provided in an email request.

This is one of the more convincing PayPal phishing scam emails we’ve seen for a while — but it’s still a scam! For a start, the recipient address isn’t associated with any PayPal accounts… a dead giveaway.

The usual tell-tale signs are all present, too. Here are the details.

As a matter of routine, you should NEVER click on a link like the one shown. PayPal doesn’t send them. It requires you to log-in to your PayPal account using your normal address, which you already know.

This scam is potentially very dangerous and, while it may be a phishing scam that tries to hijack your Adobe® account, it’s almost certainly going to load your hard drive with some form of malware. The file size of the attachment isn’t large enough to be a genuine Adobe® application, but it’s typical of a malicious script. Typical botnet script approach.

Same old same old, but still plenty of ignorant, gullible, inexperienced, careless or thoughtless suckers who’ll fall for it, even though it’s blindingly obvious.

Typical phishing scam email. All the usual tell-tale signs that rely on the recipient’s ignorance, inexperience, carelessness or gullibility.

Don’t fall for these obvious scams

Three new versions of old identity-theft phishing scams are doing the rounds…