Hurricane Rita email scam
Birmingham’s IT service and support provider, Icomm Technologies, is warning businesses, in particular SME’s, of an e-mail scam that is being used by hackers to ultimately infect systems with malicious virus’.
And with a large percentage of SME’s using inadequate or out of date antivirus software or firewall technology, it is these businesses that are most at risk from security attacks.
Disguised as alerts or updates
The e-mail scam, which is still doing the rounds, sees hackers circulating news style e-mails that are disguised as alerts or updates on the current situation regarding hurricane Rita with the aim of luring unwitting users into infecting their computers with malware from a dubious website.
Ian Callens, Icomm Sales Manager
Don’t open any e-mails from unrecognised sources, simply delete them immediately
This latest round of e-mails appears to be a copycat attack, similar to those seen following hurricane Katrina and saw e-mails with headings like ‘Tropical storm flooded New Orleans’, ‘80% of our city under water’ and ‘Katrina killed as many as 80 people’ being circulated.
And with IT insiders reporting of a recent upsurge in website registrations with catch words like hurricane, disaster, Rita, relief and donations, users need to be even more on guard to minimise risks.
After receiving an e-mail, users are unwittingly following links to various websites claiming to offer updates on the disaster, which then proceed to download a variety of Trojan horses and other related malicious programs.
In short, this enables hackers to potentially access sensitive corporate information.
Protect yourself
Icomm Technologies, Ian Callens, offers this advice: “Don’t open any e-mails from unrecognised sources, simply delete them immediately. It is then very important to delete that mail from your deleted folder to be completely satisfied that the e-mail is not a threat to your PC or infrastructure.
“There are thousands of pounds lost in the UK through virus attacks on systems and given that this particular stream of malmails relate to a sensitive international disaster, users feel ever more compelled to pursue the update lead.”
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