Scam Emails Emulating Sage are Currently Going around the Internet

Itproportal.com published news on 13th June, 2014 stating that Graham Cluley, a Security expert, has urged customers of Sage, a prominent company in Newcastle upon Tyne, United Kingdom, producing software for accounting, to be careful about scam emails purporting to be from it.

Cluley received a bogus email claiming to be from Sage (coming from a sage.co.uk address) demanding a payment towards an outstanding bill and brought it to the attention of Internet users.

It simply stated: "Please remit BACs before 12/06/2014. Please view complete invoice please click here".

Of course, it is highly unconvincing with all standard clues of a swindle which includes excessive briefness and poor writing with minimum efforts.

The sender hopes that Internauts will immediately get worried about the outstanding money and will click on the attached invoice to download it. However, Cluley notes that it's hosted at Cubby, a cloud storage service, which is an additional warning bell.

Cluley highlights that when the invoice is unzipped, you find an SCR - notably, a screensaver file which is a repackaged Windows executable file instead of a document.

Expert stresses that your PC is at risk if you run executable files of suspicious origin.

The file was identified as Trojan horse and uploaded to VirusTotal which showed less than 50% of products in its Anti-virus list. It is most probably designed to grant cybercriminals the access to your computer remotely and to allow them to embezzle your banking information.

Cybercriminals use social engineering techniques by spamming out bogus invoices to infect your PC and try to gain access to your e-banking account.

Grahamcluley.com published a statement on 12th June, 2014 quoting Cluley as saying "often fraudsters will forge an email's header information to pretend to come from a popular company and conceal their own identity".

Open all emails with extreme caution even if they appear to come from a known source.

He finally concludes that it is essential to keep your mind in control and security software updated because in every second more than one new malicious files are discovered making it hundreds of thousands every day.

» SPAMfighter News - 6/23/2014