Week in review 1 May 2015

This week was a varied mix of phishing emails. NAB, ANZ and American Express customers were all targeted. A fake traffic infringement notice began circulating in Australia. And no week is complete without a PayPal phishing email. Read on for our week in review. As always, you can click on a link to see the story in full, together with screenshots of the phishing emails in question.

Fake Online Banking Alert issued

A mandatory check of National Australia Bank account is underway, according to this email. You must login to confirm your account details. Otherwise, your account may be de-activated. Stern words, but you need not worry: this is a fake.

Bland phishing email urges confirmation

Some of the phishing emails floating around in the ether are suave and sophisticated. Others are a little less so. Like this email. In fairness, it does use the URL of a genuine ANZ site as anchor text. The rest of the email is bland. Just delete it.

Remove PayPal limitation learn now

Always good to learn a new skill, and this email brims over in the anchor text of its link. “Log In & Learn Now” it reads. This is of course our PayPal phishing email of note this week. Like all the others, it can be deleted.

Fake Traffic Infringement Notice

A traffic infringement notice became popular this week. It seems like many Australians received a notice for negligent driving, back on 7 April 2011. We are not sure what happened that day to cause Australia’s population to drive in a negligent manner. Searches have turned up blank. What isn’t blank is the email’s payload. It delivers ransomware. Don’t be negligent; delete this email immediately.

Payment Received says AMEX Phishing Email

Payment Received says AMEX phishing email is a re-hash of an earlier phishing email. It added many extra features, but (with minor exceptions) kept the same text. And it should suffer the same fate as its predecessor: banishment wherever deleted characters go.

Scott Reeves
MailShark
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