TrendLabs researchers were alerted to the discovery of spammed messages that contained Twitter URLs. The spam uses subjects such as N3 Earn Extra Income! 7L, C2 Exrtra Income Daily 4P, and Q0 $$$ Oppurtunity 6O. It informs users about supposed work-from-home opportunities for Google that pay good sums of money. It then entices users to click the Twitter URL to view the details of the bogus ‘opportunities.’ When users click the link, they will land in the sender’s Twitter page where another URL is ...

TrendLabs researchers received spammed messages purporting to have come from various companies such as eBay, J.P. Morgan Chase and Co., and Colgate-Palmolive, among others. The email bore the subject, “Payment request from,” and informs users about a certain recorded payment request. The spammed message even gave users two options—to either ignore the email if the payment request has been made or to download the attached .ZIP file and install the inspector module to decline the said payment request. If the user does not make any transaction, he/she still needs to download the attachment ...

Trend Micro threat analysts received samples of spammed messages purporting to have come from mobile phone companies, Vodafone and Verizon Wireless. The email messages carry the subject, “Your credit balance is over its limits” and inform users that their credit balance is due. To be able to review the payments, users should employ the balance checker tool attached to the email. When users open the attached .ZIP file, they will not find a balance checker tool but will instead get a malicious file (balancechecker.exe) ...

Cybercriminals are using compromised Twitter accounts to spam out information-gathering websites to unknowing users. The attack starts with compromised Twitter accounts. The accounts are used to send out Direct Messages to the followers of the users who own the compromised accounts. The Direct Message—which is basically the Twitter counterpart of a private message—contains a link to what looks like an IQ test website: An IQ test may seem harmless but the last thing asked for in the test is no longer an answer ...

We are seeing another development from the Koobface botnet, this time abusing the Google-owned service Google Reader to spam malicious URLs in social networking sites such as Facebook, MySpace, and Twitter. The Koobface gang used controlled Google Reader accounts to host URLs containing an image that resembles a flash movie. These URLs are spammed through the said social networks. When the user clicks the image or the title of the shared content, it leads to the all-too-familiar fake YouTube page that hosts the Koobface downloader ...