Quote:All holidays involve some fuss and bother, and Christmas and New Year are probably the fussiest of all: You have to buy gifts, plan gatherings, cook food a week in advance, and remember well-wishes for family and friends. For scammers, it’s also a holiday — and a more enjoyable one at that. Because people are rushing round trying to do a million things at once, they relax their vigilance and become sitting ducks. In this post we look at two money-making schemes being used by scammers this season against people distracted by Christmas preparations.


Gift card malware

These days, gift cards are a universal solution to gift-giving quandaries. If you don’t know what to give someone, a gift card for a popular store will do nicely. And if you get a card for a store you never use, you can always regift it.

So when you receive a message saying that an unknown someone has given you an Amazon or Apple gift card, that seems like a nice surprise. But shouldn’t you stop and wonder why a stranger would go to the trouble and expense?

The first thing that should arouse suspicion is the address the letter was sent from. The message might look as if it came from Apple, Amazon, or some other store, yet the sender’s address clearly indicates a public mail service such as Gmail or Hotmail.

The second reason to be doubtful is the document attached to the letter. The message says that you can receive your shiny new gift card by following the instructions in the DOC file attached — but it’s not a set of instructions; it’s a Trojan. Trojan-PSW.Win32.Azorult, to be precise.