Statement of fees 2009/2010 malware attack spammed out

Why should hackers bother to dream up new disguises for their attacks, if their tried-and-trusted ones are still working?

Right now we’re seeing a very widespread malware attack being spammed out to internet users around the world with the subject line “Statement of fees 2009/2010”.

A typical email reads:

Please find attached a statement of fees as requested, this will be posted today.
The accommodation is dealt with by another section and I have passed your request on to them today.

Kind regards.
<name>

where <name> reflects the name used in the “from” address.

Attached to the emails is a file called Statement_of_Fees_2009-2010.zip, which itself contains a Trojan horse that Sophos detects as Mal/Zbot-U. Sophos also detects the ZIP file as…

Read more in my article on the Naked Security website.

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Graham Cluley •   @gcluley

Graham Cluley is a veteran of the anti-virus 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 security analyst, he regularly makes media appearances and is an international public speaker on the topic of computer security, hackers, and online privacy. Follow him on Twitter at @gcluley, on Mastodon at @[email protected], or drop him an email.