Fresh Phishing Scam Masquerades as ‘Windows Outlook,’ Warn Researchers

Security researchers warn that a phishing e-mail posing as a message from "Windows Outlook" notifies recipients there's a virus known as C93 in their mailbox, published softpedia.com dated November 5, 2014.

However, to eliminate all viral bugs and trojans from the supposedly infected users' accounts, the e-mail directs recipients to follow one given web-link and perform a system scan with the provided Norton anti-virus.

And with this instruction, the e-mail also admonishes that failure in performing the scan would result in deactivation of the mailbox.

But, Windows Outlook hasn't sent the e-mail as also that the assertion there's the C93 malware is entirely false. Albeit C93 isn't any virus, still it's damaging being part of a phishing campaign that attempts at duping users into producing the login credentials of their Microsoft Account to online-crooks.

Thus, once the web-link is clicked, the user would be led onto one false page which resembles the real account login page of Microsoft. Subsequently, if the login details are entered followed with submitting the same, it would divert the user onto the real Microsoft site.

In the meantime, the submitted details directly goes to the crooks who may utilize them for compromising the victimized user's original Microsoft account and since these same details get utilized for accessing other Microsoft services, the scammers may compromise even those accounts of the user.

The new phishing scam quite resembles a previous one, which asserted certain 'DGTFX Virus' existed inside the user's mailbox. Security researchers observe that these kinds of virus-laced phishing campaigns effectively victimize users who're less savvy about computers and who therefore become panicky of the malware alert and thereby abide by the instructions devoid of taking proper caution.

Worryingly, it's because of the aforementioned kind of phishing e-mail scams that phishing attempts are constantly increasing online, remark the researchers.

However, they provide certain security suggestions for remaining safe from such phishing scams. These are not to follow unfamiliar web-links within unsolicited e-mails as also never view any attachments inside the uninvited e-mails. Moreover, incase the e-mail's sender seems suspicious then the message should be wholly erased from the inbox, the researchers advise.

» SPAMfighter News - 11/13/2014