Malicious PDF attack spammed out from compromised VioVet email system

If you’re a customer of VioVet, the UK pet supplies and medications website, then be very careful opening your email this morning.

Customers are reporting that they have received an email purporting to contain a £50 gift certificate from the company – but the files linked to by the email actually contain malware.

One VioVet customer who received the dangerous email was Naked Security reader Rob Sanders, who told us about his experience:

I received an email to my email address at 12:39am GMT. It was sent to an email address I use solely for Viovet purchases and purported to contain a £50 gift certificate for use on Viovet.co.uk. It was sent from support[at]viovet.co.uk by osCommerce, according to the headers and the IPs appear to check out, so it seems legitimate.

It contains 4 links to a RAR file hosted on 3 file lockers and 1 IP address. The file contains a single PDF which appears to be empty, at least when uploaded to Google Docs. I assume this…

Read more in my article on the Naked Security website.

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Graham Cluley •   @gcluley

Graham Cluley is a veteran of the cybersecurity industry, having worked for a number of security companies since the early 1990s when he wrote the first ever version of Dr Solomon's Anti-Virus Toolkit for Windows. Now an independent analyst, he regularly makes media appearances and is an international public speaker on the topic of cybersecurity, hackers, and online privacy. Follow him on Twitter, Mastodon, Bluesky, or drop him an email.