September 18, 2012 - administrator - Uncategorized
If you received an email, apparently from Microsoft, claiming to be about “Important Changes to Microsoft Services Agreement” would you trust it?
From the naked eye, after all, it looks professionally presented, has Microsoft’s funky new logo.. what could be wrong with this?
The text of the email *is* apparently genuine, as there was an actual Microsoft message – dated August 27 – that can be viewed here.
The clue which should ring your alarm bells about this latest email, however, comes in the attached file: Microsoft-Services-Agreement.pdf.exe.
To those lacking in caution (or indeed, those Windows users who haven’t told their operating system to show filenames in full) the attached file might appear to be an Adobe PDF document rather than an executable file.
But sure enough, it is an EXE file. And it will embed itself as a backdoor Trojan horse in your Registry to automatically run on startup.
Nasty.
Of course, the emails were not sent by Microsoft at all. Cybercriminals have forged the email header to trick unsuspecting users into believing the communication is legitimate, and click on the attached file.
So, don’t be fooled by fancy fonts, trustworthy names and bland corporate-style emails like the above. Not all malware threats are spammed out posing as scandalous videos of Olympic gymnasts or a pigtail-wearing young woman who claims she went to school with you.
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