Hackers Break into Sunniside Local History Society E-mail System

Hackers have broken into the e-mail system of Sunniside Local History Society (Whickham, Gateshead, UK) in an attempt to steal money.

After the hacking of Society e-mail system, the hackers sent an email to people who had e-mail ID listed with the Hotmail account address book. The e-mail pretended to have come from the Society Secretary "Francis Newman."

According to the message written in the e-mail, 'He (Newman) knew this might be quite odd, but it happened very fast, as reported by chroniclelive on June 8, 2010. He went to the embassy, which was ready to help him but he had to make an arrangement of tickets by himself and didn't have cash. He could not even access his bank account without credit card.'

The e-mail then asked people to transfer 800 Euros. It also told people how they could transfer the money to an address in Madrid.

Internet security experts have called the online crimes a growing problem. This type of attacks with the assistance of e-mails (like - Newman's case) is called spear phishing because they are specifically designed to target a single user or a group of users. The precision and accuracy of e-mail creation make the attacks more dangerous.

The e-mail sender (creator of the fake e-mail) has no information about the residing place of the recipient. However, a simple reply could be very vital for the fraudster as he starts getting clues about the e-mail recipient's identity which might be later on misused in other identity theft scams.

In view of the malicious nature of these phony e-mail attacks, security researchers have highlighted some important tips that could help in thwarting online scammers' motives. The security experts state that users' webmail provides an option of mark the e-mail as spam. Users should mark the e-mail accordingly - delete it or junk it.

Users are recommended that they should not reply to such types of e-mails irrespective of the situation mentioned in them. If the e-mail causes worry, then they should call up the friend whose name appears as sender.

Related article: Hackers Redirect Windows Live Search to Malicious Sites

» SPAMfighter News - 6/17/2010