Independence Day spam arrives

Spammers have launched an enticing 'Fourth of July’ greeting card spam campaign-just days before the Independence Day holiday-luring recipients to click on a malicious link, warns security vendor Marshal.

The email invites recipients to retrieve the greeting card by clicking on the provided link. By doing so, they expose themselves to vulnerability exploits and an executable file named “ecard.exe”, according to Marshal.

Furthermore, the vendor warned that the campaign compromises the user’s PC and merges it into a botnet using the Storm Trojan.

According to Bradley Anstis, director of product management at Marshal the Storm Trojan is using the Fourth of July as its hook continues the familiar theme of exploiting current events to entice unsuspecting email users into infecting themselves.

“We all enjoy receiving messages on special days like Valentine’s Day and Christmas. On these days our guard comes down and we sometimes open messages that we would otherwise treat with caution on any other day.

“The spammers and virus writers know this so they use events and holidays like the Fourth of July to try and catch people out,” said Anstis.

Anstis said anyone who receives a message like this from a person they do not know, or have not heard from for a long time is to delete it without opening it.

“Certainly, don’t click on the link in the message and don’t click “OK” if it asks to download a file,” he said.

The Storm Trojan first appeared in January 2007 by using current news headlines including, “Saddam Hussein alive!” and “Chinese missile shot down by USA aircraft”.