Spate of viruses received by e-mail

turbobob

I'm not sure if this is just me or a more general problem but I've had a number of infected e-mails in the last 48 hours

Here is an example which came with a file "utility.zip" (which my scanner picked up as being infected with a trojan called Artemis)

Subject: your mailbox has been deactivated

We are contacting you in regards to an unusual activity that was identified in your mailbox. As a result, your mailbox has been deactivated. To restore your mailbox, you are required to extract and run the attached mailbox utility.

Best regards, <insert name of your ISP here> technical support.

I've had others with the same trojan purporting to be from a bank to do with a pending payment and inviting you to download and install the "transaction inspector module" (yeah right). The mailbox one is slightly more convincing as it does at least customise it to include the name of your internet service provider at the bottom.

Anyway just a heads up in case anyone gets one of these e-mails.

alanrowell

It suggests that someone with your email address is infected - it may even be yourself

Suggest you do some scans as per the instructions in the malware sticky and if it isn't you contact people you are in regular contact with

mr_fishbulb

alanrowell wrote: »

It suggests that someone with your email address is infected - it may even be yourself

It does suggest that, but it is a complete lie. It is just a social engineering technique to get you to run the (infected) attachment.

turbobob

I'm reasonably confident I'm malware free. Full scan with Malwarebytes doesn't show anything and my AV software is deleting any attachments from these e-mails. I am being bombarded with them at the moment though, through an old e-mail account that tends to get a lot of spam. Another one just received:

Subject: payment request from "Colt Defense"

We recorded a payment request from "Colt Defense" to enable the charge of $9043.57 on your account.

The payment is pending for the moment.

If you made this transaction or if you just authorize this payment, please ignore or remove this email message. The transaction will be shown on your monthly statement as "Colt Defense".

If you didn't make this payment and would like to decline it, please download and install the transaction inspector module (attached to this letter).

I think you'd have to be a bit thick to fall for that as it doesn't even say which financial institution its supposed to be from :rolleyes:

kwikbreaks

turbobob wrote: »

I think you'd have to be a bit thick to fall for that as it doesn't even say which financial institution its supposed to be from :rolleyes:

Never underestimate the level of stupidity some apparently sane people can exhibit when let loose on a computer.

If they didn't work they wouldn't get sent out.

mr_fishbulb

kwikbreaks wrote: »

Never underestimate the level of stupidity some apparently sane people can exhibit when let loose on a computer.

If they didn't work they wouldn't get sent out.

Exactly. The cybercrooks are targeting the easy fruit (i.e. people who wouldn't think twice about opening an email attachment from someone they don't know).