Hoax E-mail about Nuke Accident Found in Finland

As per Finnish Communications Regulatory Authority (FCRA) and Security Company F-Secure, two mail messages, written in Finnish, were discovered to be circulating on February 20, 2008 in Finland.

Both of the messages contain link that can download a destructive program. One of the messages talks about a nuclear explosion, which has taken place in the town of Mikkeli. The Finnish language e-mail is thought to be a Trojan, a computer virus usually used to acquire passwords and details of account, when customers access online banking system.

However, F-Secure told that there are no nuclear facilities near Mikkeli where the supposed accident has taken place. It cautioned and suggested the users to delete the mails and not to open any link or attachment.

Another fake mail is purported to have come from a student Tatjana who is in a search of a relationship. The e-mail is also a Trojan with the subject line that translated as "Looking for a lover". The experts said that though the message is not harmful, yet they have advised people to delete it.

Ari Husa, an expert at the CERT-FI (Finnish National Computer Emergency Response Team), cautioned that the dangerous program got installed if the user installs the program by clicking on the link. However, Ari also added that just by opening the link will not cause any harm, as reported by YLE Uutiset on February 20, 2008.

Both FCRA and F-Secure claimed that the mails have entered inboxes of significant number of e-mails accounts. But they also said that it is too difficult to count how many users have been affected. Interestingly, the experts at F-Secure found the messages unique as they are written in very good Finnish.

Further, both F-Secure and FCRA have already warned the users not to open or access any unsolicited or suspicious mails and do not send reply to them. Besides this, F-Secure also told that same kind of messages, written in German language, were circulating in Switzerland on February 20, 2008. But these messages were not as grammatically correct as the messages in Finnish.

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» SPAMfighter News - 2/29/2008