Regulators Close Down Global Phone Tech Support Scam

Regulators from five countries joined forces together in an operation to shut down a global criminal network that allegedly bilked tens of thousands of consumers by pretending to be tech support providers.

"The scam involved cold callers who claimed to work for major technology companies, such as Microsoft or Google, and who told consumers they had viruses on their PCs, according to regulators. The callers would attempt to dupe users into giving them remote access to their computers, locking the user out while attempting to "fix" the malware that the scammer claimed was on the machine."

CNET article can be read here.

Look Out For Untrusted Happy New Year E-card Links

Shadowserver Foundation is warning about a new malicious botnet that reminds of Storm worm. Links to malicious domains are sent in emails disguised as e-card notifications. Some email subjects that have been used in those scam messages:
Greeting for you!
Greeting you with heartiest New Year wishes
Greetings to You
Happy New Year greetings e-card is waiting for you
Happy New Year greetings for you
Happy New Year greetings from your friend
Have a happy and colorful New Year!
l want to share Greeting with you (Shadowserver note: the first letter is an L)
New Year 2011 greetings for you
You have a greeting card
You have a New Year Greeting!
You have received a greetings card
You've got a Happy New Year Greeting Card!

More details about the new threat can be read from Shadowserver Foundation Calendar here.

U.S. Indicts Cybercriminals in Scareware Scam Case

The United States have accused three men of running an operation that used fraudulent ads to dupe internet users in more than 60 countries into buying more than $100 million worth of rogue anti-virus software. This was done by showing false virus warnings or other fake warnings about critical system issues on the screen and convincing users to buy treatments for those.

The defendants took advantage of online ads that they were able to post on different internet publishers websites. The publishers were not aware of true nature of the ads that rode on well known company names. Some scam products sold were DriveCleaner, ErrorSafe, Malware Alarm, Antivirus 2008 and VirusRemover 2008.

The press release can be read here.

Malware Targeting iPad Users

Security company BitDefender warns about malware that is targeting iPad owners. E-mail invitation promises to keep iPad software updated “for best performance, newer features and security”. Purpose is to lure user to click included web link that is said to contain new version of iTunes software needed to update iPad. Instead of being iTunes update the file is actually malware that BitDefender detects as Backdoor.Bifrose.AADY.

Read the story here.

Password Reset Scam Targeting Facebook Users

McAfee reports in their log about global scam campaign that targets Facebook users. One example email subject used is "Facebook Password Reset Confirmation! Customer Support.". The message states that recipient's Facebook account password has been changed and new password can be found in attached document. "The malware in the attachment is pretty much what one would expect: downloaders, password-stealing Trojan, fake-AV, or bot stuff, depending on which one you got".

The whole story here.

Big Scam Hits Email Accounts

BBC News reports about a big scam that has hit more than 30,000 email account. Account details had been posted online in two lists. First list of over 10,000 Hotmail account credientals had been reported yesterday and today there was a report of second list that contains over 20,000 email account credientals. The Credientals on this list include Hotmail, Yahoo, AOL, Gmail and also some from Earthlink and Comcast. It's still unclear whether or not both lists are related to same phishing scam.

Email scam related BBC articles:
Phishing attack targets Hotmail
Scam hits more e-mail accounts
Google targeted in e-mail scam

Scammers Fool P2P Users With Fake P2P Download Booster

What would be attractive enough to trick heavy P2P users? Of course a program that makes it possible to download torrents faster than normally. Scammers are taking advantage of that and post spam messages to torrent forums advertising Bittorrentbooster program that they say will take download speeds to totally new level. In truth the program doesn't improve download speeds but installs aggressive advertising program.

Full story here.

FTC After Scareware Scammers

"The US Federal Trade Commission (FTC) has announced a successful move to persuade a US district court to shut down a major player in the rogue anti-spyware business", writes Virus Bulletin.

"The defendants in the case are Innovative Marketing, registered in Belize but apparently based in Kiev, Ukraine, and ByteHosting Internet Services, run out of Cincinnati, Ohio, as well as several individuals running or profiting from the companies, both of which operated under a range of other names. The U.S. District Court for the District of Maryland approved the FTC's request to call a halt to the companies' activities and freeze the assets of those behind the scams."

FTC's press release can be read here.

Watch Out For Possible Gustav Related Scams

SophosLabs warns in its blog of possible scams related to the threat of Hurricane Gustav. Some years ago attackers exploited Hurricane Katrina in order to infect victims with malware.

Over the weekend, posts to the Internet Storm Center diary highlight the number of Gustav-related domains that are being registered (set 1, set 2, set 3, set 4). Though the domains may not be up to bad it's good to be aware of the potential scam sites appearing online in the next few days.

Nigerian Scam 2.0 Targets Social Networking Sites

Social networking sites have become new attractive target for spammers and scam letter posters says security company Softwin in its report. Recent Nigerian Scam spreads for example in LinkedIn social network.

In Nigerian scam 2.0 there's invitation phase before actual money begging phase. User is asked to join interesting sounding community. This is used to win user's trust. When this is achieved begins money begging.

By using social networking sites spammers and scammers can bypass many antispam filters because scams are sent only between networking site's user accounts.

LinkedIn's Director of Corporate Communications Kay Luo reminds LinkedIn's users that they should accept invitations only from people they know and trust.