Viruses/Worms News

Christmas malware emails on the prowl

Monday, December 1, 2008

Emails containing a link for an animated holiday card are an early present from malware attackers.

The attack comes from a seemingly innocent picture of an animated Christmas scene from postcards.org that will link people to the malicious file postcard.exe hosted on various servers, ComputerWeekly.com reports.

If a user clicks on the link, it gives the hacker control of the infected computer through a back door and access to various resources. During the installation process of the executable file, an image called xmas.jpeg is displayed in an effort to distract users, according to Websense Labs.

Websense claims this is the first piece of holiday malware and urges people to never click on a link within an email. The security advisor also warns of enticing shopping offers, festive attachments and holiday videos.

While the holiday season usually sees high activity in email fraud, a recent report from Dark Reading suggests there will be a sharp rise in the number of phishing attacks this year.

According to Google, approximately 77 percent of people plan to do more than half of their holiday shopping online.