Emails containing fake invoices from Apple and Plus.de distribute malware

The German users should be aware of a massive spam campaign with emails pretending to come from Apple and Plus.de (discounter) containing a invoice of a good they bought from their shop.

mahnung

plus_de-mahnung

The so called invoice is in a ZIP archive containing a … SCR file. SCR is the classical extension for screen saver programs in Windows. The file in the archive is called “Rechnung.scr” and it is currently detected by our products as TR/Rogue.957311 and TR/Kazy.169263.1.

So, what is that makes this spam campaign so special?

There are a couple of items which are not seen usually in such spam campaigns:

– They address the recipient using the full name.

– The archive attached is called “<First Name> <Last name> Dritte Mahnung store.apple.com/de <registration number>.zip” or “Kaufvertrag <First Name> <Last name> Plus.zip”

– Makes use of social engineering which addresses the German speaking countries directly. “Dritte Mahnung” is in German and it means the third demand to pay letter. Usually, after the third demand the companies send the unpaid invoices to a lawyer. This is public knowledge in the German speaking countries.

 

We can only make some wild guesses from where did the cyber criminals get the email addresses with full name. It can be that they got them from the companies that got hacked previously (Linkedin, Last.fm, Evernote, etc.)

 

 

Sorin Mustaca

IT Security Expert

via Avira – TechBlog http://techblog.avira.com/2013/04/30/emails-containing-fake-invoices-from-apple-and-plus-de-distribute-malware/en/


© Copyright Sorin Mustaca, All rights Reserved. Written For: Sorin Mustaca on Cybersecurity


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About the Author

Sorin Mustaca
Sorin Mustaca, (ISC)2 CSSLP, CompTIA Security+ and Project+, is working since over 20 years in the IT Security industry and worked between 2003-2014 for Avira as Product Manager for the known products used by over 100 million users world-wide. Today he is CEO and owner of Endpoint Cybersecurity GmbH focusing on Cybersecurity, secure software development and security for IoT and Automotive. He is also running his personal blog Sorin Mustaca on Cybersecurity and is the author of the free eBook Improve your security .

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