Posted by Virus Bulletin on Jan 21, 2011
$150,000 lost via banking trojan.
An unidentified US company has learned the hard way that email attachments - even to those that appear to be solicited - may contain malware.
The company in question had posted a job advertisement on an employment website, to which it received a response with what appeared to be a CV attached. However, in a new twist to spear phishing, the sender had in fact attached a version of the Bredolab trojan.
Using the trojan, the crooks managed to obtain the online banking credentials of the person authorized to conduct financial transactions for the company. Using these credentials, they managed to transfer over 150,000 US dollars to three bank accounts: one in Ukraine and two in the US.
Email attachments are no longer the most common way for malware to spread. However, as this story shows, attachments should never be assumed to be trustworthy - even if they have been expected in some way. Scanning attachments with good anti-virus software remains essential.
More details on the case are available at the FBI's IC3 website here.
Posted on 21 January 2011 by Virus Bulletin
