Phony E-ticket Junk E-mail Hits Consumers’ Mailboxes

Symantec the security company is cautioning its consumers for remaining vigilant of spam mails that confirm airline tickets, which are actually non-existent, as they circulate online aiming at unwitting end-users.

The dubious electronic mail that Symantec discovered pretends to say "Your Holiday E-Ticket Confirmation."

Having the caption, "Your Flight Order No. 92-6907391," the spam mail provides the details of the user's flight ticket such as its electronic number as 1689864, the date of arrival -November 22, 2011, the time -8:10 pm, and the airport's name of landing as New York JFK along with the ticket's total price as USD652.39. It then asks the user to take a print out of the particular ticket by following a given web-link.

But when clicked, the web-link diverts the recipient onto a known website based in Russia that hosts malware like it did Trojan.Maljava once. This Trojan is the detection name that Symantec utilized for spotting malevolent Java files, which abuse security flaw(s) and pose danger to unwitting end-users.

However, one can keep away from becoming prey of the above spam campaign as well as similar malware-ridden electronic mails during the approaching vacation by following some easy security tips that Symantec advises.

These are: first users mustn't follow dubious web-links within e-mails since these could lead them onto phishing sites. Rather they should straight away access the websites by typing their addresses into the Web-browsers. Moreover, they shouldn't open any file attached to unsolicited e-mails and every-time ensure that their OS (operating system) is updated to the latest version, while the security software in place is all-inclusive.

Conclusively, security researchers from Symantec remark that it's because of the malicious software-laced spam mails like within the above kinds of e-mail campaign that are behind an increase in malware. Moreover, as a means to support the company's verdict, another security company PandaLabs stated within its newly released Q3-2011 quarterly report that during the period (July-September 2011), fresh Trojans increased over the earlier quarters - Q1 & Q2-2011, when 3 detections from every 4 fresh malicious programs (76.76%) were observed as Trojan viruses, accounting for a rise from 68% of Q2-2011.

Related article: PM’s Official Web Site Targeted By Hackers

» SPAMfighter News - 11/29/2011