McAfee Disclosed Important Developments through its 2009 ‘February Spam Report’

According to the "February Spam Report" (2009) of McAfee, an online security provider, hackers are targeting website visitors booking online vacation trips to deliver malware.

Explaining the malware delivering technique hackers are employing, McAfee said that Internet users are receiving e-mail messages that pose as confirmation of an electronic ticket pertaining to a holiday trip or flight that the recipient supposedly booked online. There is also a zipped file attachment in the e-mails that claims to be an authorization form for a credit card.

However, on opening it, the computer is infected with a Trojan known as Zbot that attempts to capture the user's sensitive information like log-ins and passwords. The sensitive details comprise Internet bank accounts data, profiles on social networking site, Facebook and other services, states the report.

In addition, McAfee's report states that as Valentine's Day is approaching, spammers, like every time, are sending Valentine's Day-themed e-mails containing harmful malware. McAfee also reports that the latest outbreak of Valentine's Day spam contained links in the messages that lead to domains infected with the Waledac Trojan. This Trojan, according to the company, has features and techniques that resemble Nuwar/Storm Trojan, a well-known malware.

Moreover, the report suggested that United States has been the foremost in sending spam for long time, but as the overall spam from this country has been declining recently, China is catching up to become the leading spam distributing country.

Jeff Green, Senior Vice-President, McAfee Avert Labs, said that although the method of using Chinese computers for sending spam this year (2009) is not the same as that of last year (2008), a resurgence is being observed in spam that places China ahead of America. Thus, while the country's zombie PCs are not utilized for sending spam, one might ask if they are utilized for some other purpose, as reported by PCWorld on February 5, 2009.

Meanwhile, on account of all the mentioned cyber offences such as Trojan downloads and hacking, McAfee Avert Labs is recommending individuals as well as organizations to update their antivirus software.

Related article: McAfee Alerts Windows about Accessibility Hole in Vista

» SPAMfighter News - 2/14/2009