{"id":511,"date":"2007-07-04T22:46:00","date_gmt":"2007-07-04T20:46:00","guid":{"rendered":""},"modified":"2007-07-04T22:46:00","modified_gmt":"2007-07-04T20:46:00","slug":"ecard-storm-brews-up-less-than-happy-4th-of-july-sophos","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/mybroadband.co.za\/news\/software\/511-ecard-storm-brews-up-less-than-happy-4th-of-july-sophos.html","title":{"rendered":"Ecard storm brews up less than happy 4th of July – Sophos"},"content":{"rendered":"

The e-mails, which are being seen in inboxes worldwide, claim that the recipient has been sent an ecard greeting by a friend, and tells the user to click on a link to view the card.<\/font><\/p>\n

Subject lines used in the malicious spam campaign include:
America the Beautiful; God Bless America; Happy Fourth of July; Independence Day Celebration July 4th; Fireworks Show Your Nation’s Birthday.<\/font><\/p>\n

"Cyber criminals easily take advantage of celebrations like the 4th July to infect innocent people's computers, and potentially steal their identities. This is not just an American problem – these kinds of attacks strike around the world, and are designed to abuse PCs on a global scale," says Brett Myroff, CEO of master Sophos distributor, NetXactics.<\/font><\/p>\n

People regularly send e-greetings to friends and colleagues, so it is important to guard against these attacks and ensure computers are properly protected.<\/font><\/p>\n

Clicking on the link contained inside the e-mail, which is in the form of a numeric IP address, takes surfers to a compromised zombie computer hosting the JSecard-A Trojan horse. This malware then tries to download additional code from the Internet which Sophos intercepts as Mal\/Dorf-C.<\/font><\/p>\n

Rather than being sent to a real ecard Web site when clicking on the link, users are visiting someone else's compromised computer which is hosting malicious code designed to infect a Windows PC. These same computers, based all around the world, are responsible for spreading spam.<\/font><\/p>\n

A real ecard company is unlikely to send e-mails containing links that are a set of four numbers in the format xxx.xxx.xxx.xxx. “That should set alarm bells ringing instantly,” Myroff adds.<\/font><\/p>\n

Sophos recommends that companies automatically update their corporate virus protection, and run a consolidated solution at the e-mail gateway to defend against malware, spyware, hackers and spam.<\/font><\/p>\n

Comments<\/a><\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

IT security and control firm, Sophos, is warning of a widespread e-mail spam campaign that poses as a 4th of July greeting card, but is really an attempt to lure innocent computer users into being infected by a Trojan horse and attacked by hackers.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_sma_x_autopost_status":"idle","_sma_x_autopost_error":"","_sma_x_post_id":"","_sma_facebook_post_id":"","_sma_instagram_post_id":"","_sma_threads_post_id":"","_sma_x_attempts":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[16],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-511","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-software"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/mybroadband.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/511"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/mybroadband.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/mybroadband.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mybroadband.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mybroadband.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=511"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/mybroadband.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/511\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/mybroadband.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=511"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mybroadband.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=511"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mybroadband.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=511"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}