Wednesday, September 16, 2009

Social Engineering Watch: Another IRS Scam

Friendly Computers warns you to be wary of a new spam campaign posing as an email from the IRS that distributes malware to your computer if a link is clicked. Read more below…

Trend Micro warns users of the latest spam campaign that targets US taxpayers with Foreign Bank and Financial accounts. The said spam rides on the September 23 extended deadline set by the Internal Revenue Service (IRS) for filing ‘FBAR’ or the Report of Foreign Bank and Financial Accounts.

The spammed message bears the subject “Notice of Underreported Income” and lures users to click the link that supposedly contains the tax statement. Users who click the URL are led to a site where they get infected by various ZBOT variants. ZBOT variants are notorious for their information theft routines.Trend Micro detected these ZBOT variants as TSPY_ZBOT.BZJ, TSPY_ZBOT.BZT, TSPY_ZBOT.BZS, and TSPY_ZBOT.COB.

Click for larger view

Figure 1. Bogus IRS Spam

Ever since this spam run began, ZBOT creators have been generating new binaries, probably to avoid detection and removal.

Source: http://blog.trendmicro.com/social-engineering-watch-another-irs-scam/