LaSalle Bank Customers Receiving Phishing E-mails

As per reports, the Spam Data Mine of the UAB (University of Alabama at Birmingham) unveiled a new scam during the end period of October 2008, which is targeting the customers of LaSalle Bank with a fake e-mail.

Reports state that a spam mail is inviting LaSalle customers to use freshly introduced Digital Certificates that Bank of America requires after it reportedly acquired LaSalle on October 1, 2008. Security investigators and analysts, who examined the spam mail, say that although the e-mail is pretty simple, it is associated with a series of Digital Certificate malware that had targeted a number of prominent banks previously, like Bank of the West, Bank of America and BancorpSouth, amongst others.

However, the worthiest news about this fraud is that it takes advantage of the uncertainties in which banking customers get involved during a merger. In this connection, the Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation had warned consumers in the end week of October 2008 about a new surge in phishing e-mails exploiting the confusion among bank customers owing to acquisitions, mergers, and failures because of the current financial crisis.

Meanwhile, as confusion arising from mergers is being mitigated, reports say that UAB's Director of Research in Computer Forensics Department, Gary Warner, has warned the LaSalle Bank customers against clicking any link embedded in the spam message as it could install virus on their computer. This virus is a malicious executable that transmits usernames and passwords for chat, e-mail, banking as well as other Internet activities to criminals on the net, as reported by The Birmingham News on October 31, 2008.

Also, outlining details about the malicious program, security researchers said that the tiny program named "LaSalleSetup.exe" downloads more malware from http://customelod.com/a.exe, the address from where come all the current versions of the malware. Furthermore, the Customlod.com is hosted on a fast-flux botnet like other domains, according to the researchers.

However, LaSalle Bank on learning about the spam mail has released a security warning e-mail to its customers advising them to strictly ignore the malicious e-mail.

Related article: Local Internet Crime Gang Busted in South Africa, 13 Held

» SPAMfighter News - 11/12/2008