Saturday, January 8, 2011

Week 4 CIS608 - Holiday Scam

The article "White House Christmas Card Is Ruse To Steal Data"  makes it more than evident that crime does not take a holiday and truly just the opposite in that the holidays present more opportunities for crime.

An email Christmas card from the White House would seem to be a nice gesture spreading holiday joy and remembering those that work hard in the many government agencies. As nice as it sounds, it was quite the card with link to click on that downloaded Zeus malware for stealing password.  A second payload was then installed to steal documents.  The attack was targeted and limited to small number of groups, but it was successful in getting the recipients to click on the link.  Several of the agencies did not have the most current anti-malware software and were infected.  The attack did result in several gigabytes of data stolen.

Holidays are a wonderful time to celebrate and enjoy, but not a time to let down your guard even if it seems you have received a Christmas Card from the White House!



http://www.darkreading.com/insider-threat/167801100/security/privacy/229000194/white-house-christmas-card-is-ruse-to-steal-data.html

 

No comments:

Post a Comment