Valentine's Day brings spam and scams, warns FBI
It's a perennial security story -- spammers, scammers, and those seeking to promulgate malware will adjust campaigns to seasonal events. Christmas brings Yuletide spam, February brings Valentine's Day spam, and so on.
This Valentine's Day is no exception. No less an organ than the FBI has warned that Storm worm spammers are seeking to extend their network of compromised computers.
"If you unexpectedly receive a Valentine’s Day e-card, be careful," says the FBI. "It may not be from a secret admirer, but instead might contain the Storm Worm virus."
Click on a link to view the e-card, you get infected, and become part of the Storm botnet.
While it may seem blindingly obvious that clicking on links from untrusted sources is a bad idea, the traditional anonymity of Valentine's Day correspondence may lend itself to this kind of scam. It also doesn't hurt to remind people that risky electronic intercourse can leave you with a virus.
Security vendor Kaspersky has a slightly different take on a similar story -- the Russian anti-malware company has reported a spike of spam this morning (February 14), and mass mailings since Monday:
"Kaspersky Lab has detected a large-scale global mass mailing of Valentine’s Day spam," Kaspersky said in a press release. "The message currently accounts for about 5 percent of all mail traffic checked by Kaspersky Hosted Security Services."
The Russian security vendor first noticed the Valentine’s Day spam run at 11pm GMT on the evening of 11th February. The text of the spam message asks the recipient to click on a link to view a selection of Valentine’s Day e-cards. However, clicking on the link downloads a malicious file -- not the Storm worm this time, but a Trojan Kaspersky calls "Win32.Tibs."
Meanwhile, web safety campaign Get Safe Online is warning of more Valentine's Day scams - this time the dangers of online dating.
Get Safe Online polled 1,012 people in the UK, all over 18. Apparently, almost a fifth of internet daters have been approached for money whilst online, "many of them under the guise of someone who talks repeatedly about their financial difficulties, playing on emotions to elicit cash," said a press release.
Tony Neate, managing director of Get Safe Online, told a security conference in London on Tuesday of the dangers of online dating.
"One fifth of people have dated online, and a fifth of those have been asked for money," said Neate. "The survey found that men who are 55 or over are the most vulnerable to being scammed. When I found out, I thought 'My God! That's me!'. They get scammed by some blonde bombshell, while [the men] are thinking, 'That time I went to the gym must have paid off.'"