Beware! Cyber criminals may spoil your V-Day

Updated on: 12 February,2009 08:57 AM IST |
A Correspondent |

Think twice before opening an online love message or date invitation, for it may be spam which can infect your PC

Think twice before opening an online love message or date invitation, for it may be spam which can infect your PC

Cyber criminals are working hard to spoil your Valentine's Day celebrations by exploiting existing vulnerabilities in your software through spams, fake sites andu00a0u00a0 online date invitations.
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"Organised criminal units have a long history of timing their attacks to coincide with popular occasions like Valentine's Day," said cyber security expert Surendra Singh, regional director for the SAARC region of websecurity firm, Websense Inc.

Phishing messages that promise a date, love, healthcare, premium rate phone services are very common.

Common traps

Courtesy Malware, the notorious Waledac gang of cyber criminals (or at least exhibiting the same characteristics as them) send e-mails that have colourful images of puppies or a picture of hearts and ask "Guess, which one is for you?".
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The entire web page is one big image and a single click from a tricked user commences the download of Trojans named "onlyyou.exe" or "youandme.exe" and connects to remote websites to receive commands and send information about the compromised system.

Networking nuisance

Spammers are also using social networking sites like Twitter, Facebook and Myspace to trick users into visiting fake sites, installing viruses and spreading malware on the internet.

A spam email may pretend to originate from social networking sites. Click on the link and the user unwittingly downloads a banking Trojan designed to steal log in credentials on a banking site.