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New wave of phishing attacks serves malware to PCs and Macs[/h] By Ed Bott
March 23, 2012, 5:24am PDT
Summary: Malware distributors have launched a new wave of attacks aimed at taking over unpatched PCs and Macs. They look like routine messages from a bank or a social network, but instead of phishing for passwords, they’re serving up malware.
In the past few weeks, I’ve noticed an alarming increase in fraudulent email messages coming to some old, well-established email addresses of mine.
It’s not just the quantity of messages that’s noteworthy, it’s the quality as well. This particular wave of attacks includes some attacks that are frighteningly real looking. And they’re being used to serve up a toxic brew of malware to unprotected systems.
Consider these two examples of messages I received this week. The first appears to be a fraud alert from American Express:
It has all the right logos, and the wording has the same professional tone and grammatical accuracy I would expect of a legitimate communication from American Express. Unlike many phishing messages, this one made me look much more closely, and I suspect that the click-through rate was higher than most such attempts.
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My Computer
System One
-
- OS
- 1st W10 Professional x64/W7 Ultimate x64 - 2nd Remote system: W10 Insider Builds/W7 Professional
- Computer type
- PC/Desktop
- System Manufacturer/Model
- Custom Builds
- CPU
- AMD Phenom II X4 975 Deneb 3.6ghz -2nd case AMD Atholon II 3.2ghz
- Motherboard
- Gigabyte GA-790XTA-UD4
- Memory
- Kingston Hyper-X DDR3 1600mhz 16gb - 2nd case Kingston Hyper-X "Fury" DDR3 1600mhz 8gb
- Graphics Card(s)
- MSI Radeon HD 5750 1gb - 2nd AMD Radeon 6450
- Sound Card
- Creative Xtreme Gamer - 2nd case Realtek Onboard audio
- Monitor(s) Displays
- Acer 19" dual monitor setup - 2nd case HP 20" lcd
- Screen Resolution
- 1440x900 same on both builds
- Hard Drives
- 1st build
WD Caviar Black Edition Sata II 1tb two OS drives
WD RE "Heavy Duty Sata II 2tb two Storage/Backup
2nd build
WD Blue Sata II 500gb
WD Black Edition Sata III 1tb
WD Green Power Sata II 1tb in external usb enclosure
- PSU
- Corsair TX750H 750w -Corsair 500w
- Case
- Antec 900-2 -NXZT Vulcan Mini tower/carrying handle
- Cooling
- 120mm front pair, 120 rear 200cm top - 120mm Front intake 200mm side cover
- Keyboard
- Azio Blue led back lit both builds.
- Mouse
- MSI DS200 11 button programmable Gaming optical mouse - Odessa 3 button dual scroll trackball
- Internet Speed
- 30mbps
- Other Info
- two MSI 22x ide dvd burners, 25 usb flash drives used for Linux Live, live data recovery 128gb, and Windows 7, 10 usb installation keys