Its understandable to feel a touch of fear when you receive a scam email that knows your name and home address, because of the lurking question, Why me?. The information includes: name, address, DOB, political affiliation, last date voted, etc. The malware ends up with a randomly-chosen numeric name, such as 05643.EXE. Have you recently opened an email that you now have reason to distrust, or are you concerned that you may have let malware sneak in by taking risky advice that came from someone you dont know? !, thanks for flagging this up guysI received an email today (edited to remove link) very similar to ones described above starting with good day to you then my home address (which was the worrying part) and a word doc attachmentI am pretty much aware of the scams etc but I nearly feel for thisuntil I noticed they Got my name slightly wrong..(using one I once registered when I opened a google account using a variation of my name). I looked up on google and just stumbled upon this post, so Im (sorry guys) glad that it wasnt only me. In fact, the GIF file has just 10 bytes of valid header data, followed by a 256-byte decryption key, followed by about 0.5MB of binary data scrambled by XORing it with the decryption key repeated over and over. When we tested out this attack in SophosLabs, the downloaded malware was Troj/Agent-AURH, a strain of bot or zombie malware that calls home to a so-called command-and-control (C&C) network for further instructions. There was a previous wave of similar spam which included a valid telephone number. Thanks to Graham Chantry and Tad Heppner of SophosLabs for their help with this article. Many UK residents woke up yesterday to a rude internet shock: a scam email that greeted them with their real name and home address. If the macro gets an unexpected response on its first attempt to download the fake GIF, the crooks assume that some sort of firewall or web-filtering anti-virus blocked the download, so they try to talk you into turning your security filtering off: Its easy to assume that the popup comes from Word, or even Windows itself, but thats the crooks talking to you. The text in the emails vary slightly from sample to sample, but examples seen by SophosLabs go something like this: The salutation uses your first name (given name); the filename is your surname (family name); and the address is your home address, complete with postcode. That means it wouldnt work on an iPhone. So I think you are golden. Equally sneakily, the crooks pop up the following message, right at the very end: Its all a pack of lies: the file is corrupted message means exactly the opposite of what it says, because it only appears after the malware has been downloaded, unscrambled, saved to disk and launched in the background. With most calls I receive, this works on about 75% of them. How can you report this? Myself, my wife and daughter have all had one of these emails today, just the Word Doc and invoice. Quite how anyone thinks that is acceptable behaviour for a database that is supposed to regulate your elegibility to participate in secret ballots that are supposedly the cornerstone of modern democracy, Ill bite. I received an e-mail claiming that I sent someone a money request using Paypal in which the phishers simply pulled my actual name and mailing address from Paypal. Follow @NakedSecurity on Instagram for exclusive pics, gifs, vids and LOLs! To get you to agree to run their malicious macro program, the crooks use what you might call a bait-and-switch trick. Doubt it. Oh the power of the Internet! The crooks have come up with many ways to trick you into clicking [Enable content], usually by making it sound as though it somehow increases security, for example by decrypting or unlocking confidential information. When we tested out this attack in SophosLabs, the downloaded malware was Troj/Agent-AURH, a strain of bot or zombie . Providing access to your email address book is one common way for your name and other information to be obtained. Good article. Because of the emails it was sent to and the address details we can work out it is data that only eBay was holding. Bin/forget, Just had an email with my old name and address on with a zip file attached, did not open it as it seemed really odd, it had a pass number on it too, said it was a statement! To make matters worse, Microsoft actually does ask you to log in to turn on the edit function if you have their Android view only version of Word. On the other hand, there must be some truth in the claims about a data leak, because the crooks know your name and address and not just vaguely, but precisely, so who knows what else they know about you? A check of haveibeenpwned.com for those recipients indicates no common data breach. Even if the document claims to be an invoice you dont owe, or threatens you in some way, dont let fear or uncertainty get the better of you. Thanks. I have about 12 active email addresses that I use for various things and websites, the email address that this arrived in is one that to the best of my knowledge is only used by Ebay and Paypal. The twist was it had three pieces of information in it that I havent typically found bundled together: my full name, my mailing address, and my email address. (You only have one date of birth, one SSN, one national ID number, one mothers maiden name, one home address and all of those are somewhere from hard to impossible to change.). Even if you opened the attachment then you are probably fine as long as you did *not* also do these: * Enter the four-digit passsord from the email. If they are, theyll tell you they areand if they arent, theyll still tell you they are . Yes, youre right Darren, but only for electors who dont opt out of the open register. Why does the malicious file go to http://www.download.windowsupdate.com/msdownload/update/v3/static/trustedr/en/authrootstl.cab and download this? I think its because since malware is run inside a windows virtual machine, these requests to windows update are legitimate. I stupidly clicked on the zip file from my iphone but fortunately it didnt open as I cant even open legitimate zip files on my iphone. Robocalls that hang up immediately are usually meant to verify your number. The data has definitely leaked out from somewhere, but as yet I dont know where.. OK, so I got suckered and did open the file have since run Avast and Sophos Virus Removal Tool, but came up with no hits have I got away with it? Dont get caught out by the Tinder scammers, The scam that knows your name and home address heres what to do, UBER HAS BEEN HACKED, boasts hacker how to stop it happening to you, URGENT! Collectively, were getting better and better at spotting emails that dont come from where they say, for example because our real bank doesnt call us Dear Customer, and because our real mortgage provider knows how to spell its own kompani nayme without making absurd misteaks. Problem is the company does exist but is in the US. If. Which can play back the ISPs in the US being able to harvest and sell all customer data the hackers can buy it, even if by proxy.. Once our data is out there, its there, As you sayonce out there, its out there , Thats why breaches can be so pernicious. If that message doesnt appear, the macro code to fire up the downloaded malware probably didnt work properly. I assume that Im OK and that the malware hasnt been placed on the phone? * Click [Enable Content]. But because theyve used a rather odd variant of my name, I know they got the data from ebay (or an ebay seller). I wonder if thats significant? Answer (1 of 3): Not in the least. Hello, Spammers have various methods to obtain information. Its odd that the document (.dot) is actually a template a document thats used to create other documents. You dont need to uninstall your existing anti-virus first our Virus Removal Tool is designed to work alongside other security products. The attack as it unfolded for us ended up with a Windows-specific program (the malware). Just in case I just wanted to see what DodgyWare it might be and run the file through online virus scanner. Despite the zip file not opening do you think my iphone could still be at risk since I still opened the email and clicked on the zip file? Be prepared to explain yourself clearly, which typically means keeping suspicious emails and messages. Never ask the sender of the email for advice. You could also look by hand in your TEMP folder, see if there is a file with a name of consisting of a few numeric digits followed by .EXE. I binned the message resisting the temptation to open the attachment. At least in the UK, many companies that collect addresses put them through some kind of standardisation algorithm to produce address data in the format preferred by the Post Office, so it can be hard to figure out the likely source of the breach. what if a hacker group has a front business that is solely used to purchase user data? Sometimes I get the first name, someti. It looked so legit that I tried to open on my iphone but it wouldnt work. I received one. 192.com holds the same info for a subscription fee and credits. So it feels wrong and risky not to open it to see how much is in there. Or was the sender just that incompetent they didnt know what they were sending? Also, in one case the email was addressed to the recipients spouse and had the spouses work address. However, if you werent able to open the ZIP file in the first place, then you didnt even get to the beginning of the beginning of the attack, let alone to the beginning of the end. document.getElementById( "ak_js_1" ).setAttribute( "value", ( new Date() ).getTime() ); 24/7 threat hunting, detection, and response delivered by an expert team as a fully-managed service. The @bit was wanadoo.fr. It's quite easy to obtain someone's name with just the phone number. Same here but in addition, they had my mobile number (new number) !!!! Those calls will be brief, and often the call gets disconnected as soon as you say hello. You could also install and run SysInternals Process Explorer (edited to remove link) to see if you have any processes running that are identified by Virus Total as being malicious. I have just received one of these, the address , county and postcode were all spot on. All recipients were in the UK only. Sophos Home protects every Mac and PC in your home. The GIF header makes the file look innocent, even though it wont display as an image, and the Vigenre scrambling means that the suspicious parts of the file arent obvious. Thanks, Got exactly the same just now, iPhone isnt at risk IMO. So names and addresses dont need to originate from a data breach when the info is sold freely anyway. In the case of this spam run and that one, all the email addresses, postal addresses and phone numbers seemed to be a few years old and not current. I dont recall .dot files having vulnerabilities that .doc* files lack. My wife got one of these using s form of her name that is as far as we know only used on her eBay account. If you do open the attachment, which is portentously called Yoursurname.dot, Word prompts you for a password, just as the scammers warned you to expect: The password is randomly chosen for each recipient, and you really do need to use the one in your own email to open the file: At this point, the crooks are aiming to persuade you to enable macros in the open document, which means youll be running program code stored in the file by the crooks themselves. The good news, if you can call it that, is that through articles and advisories like this one, youll soon see that you arent alone, and that the crooks are targeting a much wider group than just you. After all, if youre concerned about the trustworthiness of the sender, the worst thing you can do is to take their advice about computer security! Not happy at all that they manage to get hold of my phone number . News in brief: Alabama considers porn filters; Samsung launches new Galaxy; celebs Instagram hacked, Falling in love online? Our zombified computer didnt receive any instructions during our test, but its important to remember that in attacks of this sort: The malicious macro in the original document has two more tricks up its sleeve to go along with the fake GIF file unscrambling shenanigans. The document presents an official-looking help page that tells you that you need to Enable editing to view its content. Zoom for Mac patches sneaky spy-on-me bug update now. Why do spam callers hang up when you answer? It claimed to be a notice for a failed package delivery. I think thats a safe assumption. What you are saying "I didn't sign up for robo calls!" Every and any time you put your name, phone number and address into the internet for any reason or on a postcard or other "win a vacation" you are consenting. So it feels wrong and risky to open it to see how much is in there. I deleted it. Will ebay care? It has a Word document attachment that is identified as infected by Gmail likely very similar to what youve documented here. If there is, then it could be the malwarea good hint is if it has a timestamp that matches the moment when you opened the DOT file. I received an email this morning from an individual first name and surname @sfr.fr On 3/24 I received an interesting email that was placed by Gmail in my spam folder. I also replied to the email asking who the person was then I googled when I got home and found this. Indeed, the scamminess of the text made the email more worrisome, and thus perhaps paradoxically more likely to squeeze victims into action than a well-written email from an obviously unlikely source. You know its a scam, not only from the terrible mistakes in spelling and grammar, but also from the fact that no official organisation would dare write what amounts to a veiled threat of this sort. 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