Phishing E-Mails Related to StarCraft II Wings of Liberty Grab Battle.net Accounts

According to new reports from Tom's Hardware released on August 3, 2010, online fraudsters are attacking fans of StarCraft II by sending them e-mails that are posing as messages from Blizzard. These messages offer recipients a CD-key for StarCraft II provided they make an access to their account on Battle.net by following a certain web-link.

Cyber-criminals, all over the world, distribute fake phishing e-mails, targeting Internet operators and in one such instance the e-mail in discussion outlines various instructions for its recipients. The message displays one bogus acknowledgement receipt related to StarCraft II Wings of Liberty game copy that the user supposedly bought. Also a fake URL is provided which leads the user onto a phony Battle.net online site where he is directed to login so that the act reveals his Battle.net account credentials to the fraudsters.

The instructions inside the phishing e-mail appear step-by-step guiding the user as to how he can get a CD-activation key. While the message appears quite realistic, perusing it minutely reveals that the sender's ID is not an authorized e-mail ID of Blizzard like @blizzard.com and @battle.net.

Hence, e-mail users are advised that they remain watchful of any message which states that they can now have a StarCraft II Wings of Liberty game copy or that since a purchase was made of such a copy all that they now need to do is log into Battle.net. For, these e-mails are merely crafted for the theft of users' Battle.net account details, according to the security researchers.

In fact, when users receive such e-mails purporting to be from Blizzard, they must not hit on any web-link provided in the messages rather use the Web-browser and manually access the company's authorized site.

Meanwhile, scammers using StarCraft II Wings of Liberty for a malicious purpose isn't something new. During June 2010, Microsoft alerted of phony StarCraft II files related to the Blizzard game's pirated copies that carried malware, wherein the files seemed obtainable from Warez websites and BitTorrent trackers that acted as the malware's distribution mediums.

During that scam, the game's counterfeit copies contained the malware programs VirTool:Win32/VBInject.gen!DM and Worm:Win32/Rebhip.

Related article: Phishing With A Redirector Code

» SPAMfighter News - 8/14/2010