Viruses/Worms News

New Waledac variant unleashed, spoofing coupons

Friday, February 27, 2009

After spending most of its time targeting spam email during specific holidays, it appears the Waledac botnet has unleashed a new variant spoofing a legitimate coupon website and hiding its tracks using IP address geolocation.

News of variant came late on Thursday with security officials saying Waledac was producing a malicious copy of the site that sells The Couponizer, an organizational product that assists consumers to store coupons, SCMagazineus.com reports. The botnet further legitimized its phishing attack by offering coupons on the fake site for stores, restaurants and companies near where the user lives.

This was done through a new social engineering feature previously not seen in other Waledac variants called IP address geolocation, which allowed the cybercriminal to determine a user's location based on his or her IP address, security officials told the news provider. The IP address is queried against a database for the location with the results incorporated into the webpage.

Waledac, which is widely considered an evolved version of the Storm botnet, had mainly focused on holiday-centered attacks prior to this by releasing spam emails with malicious links on Valentine's day and near the Christmas and Chanukah holiday.