Outbreak: USPS or Royal Mail package email delivers malware attack

Graham Cluley
Graham Cluley
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 @grahamcluley.com
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Delivery package 170SophosLabs has seen a widely spammed-out malware campaign today, designed to trick unsuspecting computer users into infecting their computers with a Trojan horse.

The messages use a variety of subject lines, and appear to contain adaptions depending on whether the criminals believe they are targeting a British or American computer user (Brits are lured into opening the attachment with an email seemingly from the Royal Mail, whereas American-based recipients may believe the message is from USPS).

Package list

The wording can vary, but here are some examples of both the USPS and Royal Mail versions of the malicious email:

Package usps

Package royal mail

Contained inside the ZIP file is a Trojan horse, detected by Sophos products proactively as Mal/Bredo-Q.

The malware is only capable of infecting computers running Windows.

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If you are one of the many people seeing this malware attack in your email today, please do not click on the attachment even if you are waiting for a package to be delivered. Instead, simply delete the email and your computer will be safe.


Graham Cluley is an award-winning keynote speaker who has given presentations around the world about cybersecurity, hackers, and online privacy. A veteran of the computer security industry since the early 1990s, he wrote the first ever version of Dr Solomon's Anti-Virus Toolkit for Windows, makes regular media appearances, and is the co-host of the popular "The AI Fix" and "Smashing Security" podcasts. Follow him on Bluesky, Mastodon, and Threads, or drop him an email.

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