An email supposedly from a private investigator concerned for your personal privacy actually hides a Trojan horse, according to security experts.
The email warns you that your telephone line is being tapped and your conversations are being listened to.
"I am working in a private detective agency. I can't say my name now. I want to warn you that I'm going to overhear your telephone line. Do you want to know who is the payer? Wait for my next message," emails intercepted by Sophos read.
An attachment on the email claims to be a recording of the telephone conversation, but is in fact a Trojan horse that will install further malware onto your PC that it downloads from a rogue website.
"It may seem to hard to believe that anyone would fall for a trick like this, but it wouldn't be a surprise if people tried to run the attachment just out of curiousity as to what it contained," said Graham Cluley, senior technology consultant at Sophos.
"Some may even assume it is a joke recording and not realising they are putting their computer, and indeed their wallet, in danger," he continued.
According to Sophos, these emails have been in circulation for a number of weeks now, but the inept cybercriminals behind them made a mistake in the attack code.
"It's a case of from defective to detective for this attack. The first spam-run of this Trojan horse failed for the malware authors because they made fundamental mistakes in their code," said Cluley.
www.sophos.com
Topic: Phone-tapping email hides Trojan (Read 472 times)