E cards - your personal details
Have you ever received one of those emails from a loved one with a link to an e-card that they have generated for you? Well cyber crooks are now trying to take advantage of you in this way as well.
Currently there is an spam email out there that appears to come from a secret admirer in an attempt to obtain your identity and personal information. Thousands of people’s logons, credit card numbers, and online banking details must have already been collected.
The attack encourages you to click a link in an email that takes you to a site to “collect” your e-card. The actual website that you are taken to installs a key logger on your system. A key logger is a program that transparently logs all your keyboard strokes and sends the information to a central database on the internet somewhere, or just locally on your machine. Obviously the person that has configured the log can then collect all your computer usage and passwords and use them as though they where you.
Windows users who have installed the MS06-014 patch, released in May, are not vulnerable to this. So please make sure you have installed all your critical windows updates via the windows update link on your start menu. Or you may have them set to be installed automatically my recommended advise.
This type of cyber crime is referred to as “phishing”. I would also recommend that you search Google for Spam and phishing and try to get a better appreciation of these types of threats. Always treat email as a potential threat to obtain information about you or that it may contain some sort of damaging attack at your computer.
Matthew Aylard - CSA