The Virus / Scammers Are At It Again

[George Bokros]

Got two emails today from two different senders telling me my corporate wire transfer request has been rejected. One was for $35,700 to a jewelery store the other I just deleted before really looking at the brief info the email contained. They both said to open the attached zip file for the reason for the rejection. I of course I did not open the files.

Just thought I would give everyone a heads up.

[Chuck Wintle]

Got two emails today from two different senders telling me my corporate wire transfer request has been rejected. One was for $35,700 to a jewelery store the other I just deleted before really looking at the brief info the email contained. They both said to open the attached zip file for the reason for the rejection. I of course I did not open the files.

Just thought I would give everyone a heads up.
They keep at it until they reel a fish in. And they never stop.

[Bruce Page]

It's hard to believe that anyone would fall for this but people do.

[Ole Anderson]

I just got an email saying my credit card got hacked and was blocked. Second time in a year. Now I gotta wait a week for a new card. A lot of bad people out there.

[Myk Rian]

I just got an email saying my credit card got hacked and was blocked. Second time in a year. Now I gotta wait a week for a new card. A lot of bad people out there.
What. You got a new card? Really?

[Matt Evans]

This has been the year for replacement cards it seems. I have two debit/credit cards, and both of them have been replaced several times this year. I get an email and a letter saying I've shopped at somewhere that the credit card readers have been compromised, and then they send me a new card.

[Al Launier]

I recently subscribed to the Delta/American Express to get air mileage since we plan on flying a bit more & prefer Delta airlines. We book almost every charge against this card. Cutting to the chase, I've really grown to like American Express, particularly since they send me an email everytime within minutes of a charge that has been made that didn't have my signature on it. Plus, they send a very detailed itemized billing statement of every charge made against the card. The first year is free, then an annual fee of $95 thereafter. We will continue our subscription based on what we've experienced so far.

[Curt Harms]

It's hard to believe that anyone would fall for this but people do.

My thought as well. George's scam mail didn't even appeal to his greed like the Nigerian Prince things do. Yet it must pay enough to continue. On a related note, I'm noticing a LOT of new card terminals in retail shops.

[Phil Thien]

It's hard to believe that anyone would fall for this but people do.

Well let me tell you a little story about that.

We accept credit cards for payments through a payment processor I will not name. A top-tier processor. One of the three largest.

The first of every month, I get a statement (via E-Mail) for the previous month. They look boilerplate, I know exactly what they look like.

Well last August I woke up and saw the statement in my inbox and thought "should I take a look now, or later." I normally enter some of the values from the statement in a spreadsheet, where I track my discount rates. I had an appointment that morning so figured I'd just do it later.

When I got back to the shop, I saw another statement in my inbox. The two statement E-Mail's looked identical, except for some numbers at the end of the subject line.

So the first one had a malware payload as an attachment, the 2nd on was the true statement from the processor.

I was so close to opening the attachment of the infected one first-thing in the morning. BTW, the attachment had a filename 100+ characters in length, and an Acrobat icon embedded, designed to disguise the file type.

So my point in all this is, some of the spoof E-Mail efforts are extremely sophisticated, and will fool even the most discerning user. In this case, they perfectly timed the release. They copied (via cut and paste) the body of a previous E-Mail. They went to lengths to disguise the type of file that was attached. They were targeting people that had merchant accounts.

It was a top-notch stuff.

For my clients with corporate mail servers, I don't allow any attachments through that include any sort of executable code. All those attachments are forwarded to me. And some of the fake UPS and FedEx and banking E-Mails are getting so good that the only reason I know they're malware is because they have an executable attachment.

It is also interesting to note the timing of the best ones, there is thought that goes into the process. I see more on Fridays and Monday mornings. Friday likely because they hope to infect a machine and hope that machine is left on over the weekend. Mondays likely because people are returning to work and have a full inbox and aren't looking terribly closely at what they're opening. I see the absolutely most around US holidays, where IT staff are probably in short supply, and there are extended periods where infected machines may be left running.

So the moral of the story, though, is yeah, people fall for it. I almost fell for it.

[Chuck Wintle]

I just got an email saying my credit card got hacked and was blocked. Second time in a year. Now I gotta wait a week for a new card. A lot of bad people out there.

Just wondering how you determined this email was not part of a scam?

[Joe Kieve]

Al....thanks for flying Delta. Hope all your flight experiences are good ones. (Guess you can tell I'm a Delta retiree)

[Ole Anderson]

Just wondering how you determined this email was not part of a scam?
First I looked at the domain address of the email, it was 53.com which is Fifth Thirds legit domain, next the email said to call the number on the back of the card which was the clincher.

[Al Launier]

Al....thanks for flying Delta. Hope all your flight experiences are good ones. (Guess you can tell I'm a Delta retiree)

After flying the Southwest cattle car a couple times, that convinced me to spend a bit more, select my own seat in advance, be better treated as a customer, and to be more comfortable.

[George Bokros]

I would fly the Grace L Ferguson Airline and Storm Door Company (old Bob Newhart routine) before I will ever fly Southwest again.