Worm Tempts Victims with Familiar Brands
January 24, 2009 by AntivirusWare.Did you get an e-coupon book from McDonald’s in your email inbox recently? Be careful. It may not be from Mickey D’s. In fact, it could be carrying an e-parasite, a worm out to infect your system. This is the new frontier in malware—emails disguised as holiday coupon emails from familiar companies are hosting malware to infiltrate your system.
In the McDonald’s fakery, the email purported to offer the latest McDonald’s discount menu. It asked the recipient to print out the attached coupon. Other scammers, pretending to be from Coca Cola, have sent similar mailings. The Coca Cola scam claims that the document it wants you to print is a contest entry that will entitle you to enter their new online game in which you could win Coca Cola drinks for life. The attached zip file, however, contains files named either coupon.exe or promotion.exe. Both contain dropper files that are remote access for Trojans.
Hallmark cards are another brand that has been co-opted by malware scammers. You get a cute holiday card—and a worm on your PC. There have been three different fake cards dressed up as Hallmark products, and these offer you an insidious worm virus that mass mails copies of itself to all the addresses it harvests in the affected machine.
The emails are very carefully constructed to look very legitimate, with none of the easy clues that tend to tip the hands of scammers and spammers. Antivirus software websites recommend you don’t open email attachments and keep your antivirus software up to date.