During the last week of August 2014, we observed a salad spam surge caused by KELIHOS spambot. Salad spam contains gibberish words in the email body, and is usually employed by cybercriminals so as to bypass spam filters. Here are some samples we spotted: Figures 1-2: Screenshots of spammed messages Majority of this outbreak’s victims are from the…
Read MoreWithin a short time period of less than 24 hours, cybercriminals have already taken advantage of Monday’s explosion at the Boston Marathon as a newsworthy item. My colleague Mary Ermitano-Aquino noted a spam outbreak of more than 9,000 Blackhole Exploit Kit (clarification below) spammed messages, all related to the said tragedy that killed at least three people…
Read MoreWe’re nearing the holiday season and some of you might be going for some early holiday shopping—checking your money to go for a shopping splurge. The holiday season also ushers in cybercrime activities that are typical this time of the year:
- We have seen a surge of fake bank emails. We’ve also seen other forms of spammed threats, including KELIHOS, VAWTRACK, and even some forms of the 419 scam.
- We have also witnessed the increase in BANKER malware. Variants of this malware family attempt to steal sensitive information, such as banking credentials and email account details. They employ info-stealing techniques, often times, phishing pages that mimic the official banking sites, to get a user’s bank information, such as user names, passwords, or card codes. The stolen information could then be sent to a predetermined email address, to drop zones in hosted servers or to a URL via HTTP post.
A few months after the case of the missing Malaysia Airlines Flight 370, the world was shocked again with another tragic news involving the crash of Malaysia Airlines 777 (also known as MH17) over Ukraine that killed nearly 300 passengers and crew members. As with past incidents, cybercriminals are quick to take advantage of the said…
Read MoreSpammers are constantly trying new ways to bypass filters to deliver spam. One of the more typical methods is the use of word salad spam, wherein spammed messages are filled with random words. We recently noticed a spike in salad spam that’s circulating in the wild. Aside from the sudden increase, what’s interesting about this…
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