More than 30,000 email accounts from Gmail, Hotmail, AOL, and Yahoo were hacked into over the past few days. These email accounts are now reportedly sending out thousands of shopping sites. These sites are fake and are intended to steal personal information from the visitors. (RTE of Irelan)
This is how it works. The spammer gets into your email account and starts sending out emails like the one shown on the left to contacts or just people that the spammer has on a list. The email invites people to come to a special web site that you appear to have endorsed. (Image from the Washington Post.)
If you go to the link in the email, you are taken to a web site. You will find that the site has some incredible deals on electronics. You may even say that the deal is too good to be true. But, when you attempt to buy, you will learn that the only way to purchase is via wire transfer. I do not know how many people would do this, but they might if they felt you endorsed the deal.
Amichai Shulman, a security expert with Imperva told the BBC that the high numbers of
victims suggested that the scam was a key-logging attack. (
The Telegraph) This type of
attack is made possible when malicious software, unwittingly installed on a
computer after visiting infected sites, collects information about
keystrokes, such as the user name and password for a web mail account, and then sends
that data back to a hacker.
I recommend that you do the following: (1) Don't respond to this email or one like it. (2) Check the SENT items folder in your mailbox to see if you have anything unexpected in it. (3) If you have any worry about your account -- change your password now.
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