Week in Review 19 June 2015

Week in review 19 June 2015

This week sees the return of our week in review. It is shorter this week, due to people being away for the start of the week. The week was not short on malicious emails. This week we had two taxation phishing campaigns start up, and a voucher scam. 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.

Another Taxation phishing email scam

The week started with a phishing campaign aimed at Australian users. This campaign featured one of the more boring emails we’ve seen. It consisted of two sentences. Don’t underestimate it though. The payload is dangerous: in several cases, ransomware was installed on a PC. This type of email is a hit around the end of financial year. The promise of money back from the government is an irresistible lure. Unfortunately, neither this email nor the email targeting New Zealand users (see below) are legitimate. Delete this email immediately if you receive it.

Fake Woolworths voucher scam

Yet another email promising a gift voucher (this time from Woolworths) hit the ethers this week. For answering a simple question you can receive a gift voucher of $1000. The question is a loaded question, in more ways than one. You get directed to the same malicious site no matter what. Delete this email if you receive it.

Internal Revenue commission scam email

Don’t bother with this email. It masquerades as being from the New Zealand Internal Revenue Commission (the Internal Revenue Commission is New Zealand’s government taxation body). Its purpose though is to spread malware. It does this by providing a zip file attachment. Downloading it installs malware on your PC. If you receive this email, delete it.

Scott Reeves
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