Spam campaign roundup: The Memorial Day Edition (May 24, 2013)

Memorial Day is the day of honoring American soldiers who died serving the country in wars. It is celebrated on the last Monday in May and this year it will be on the 27th. Consumers also watch out for deep discounts on goods that can yield them big savings during this holiday weekend. Unfortunately, cyber criminals take advantage of such individuals by sending unsolicited advertisements for products and services that often yield to fraud, phishing and even malware.

Over the last week, the Dell SonicWALL threats research team has been tracking down all Memorial Day related spam emails.

As the Memorial Day weekend approaches, we are receiving an increasing amount of holiday related spam emails. These emails have a common theme of trying to lure consumers to click on the links and provide their personal information in exchange for access to heavily discounted products. The following are some of the most common email subjects:

• Secret Half Off Memorial -Day Event
• Access Memorial-Day Prices 6 Days Early
• Gain Private Access To Memorial Day (half-off) prices
• Price Rebate On All Cars (Memorial Day Deal)
• Wow – 90%_off iPads, MacBooks, & more – ends Memorial Day
• Look fantastic for Memorial Day weekend and shred unwanted fat
• Memorial Day shopping cash is now available

Some emails are purporting to come from popular department stores or restaurant chains promising gift cards or coupons, that when clicked would take you to a URL different from the real merchant’s website but has the merchant’s branding. The consumer will then be asked to enter their personal information and to participate in a number of offers often costing money in fees or subscriptions without the guarantee of ever receiving the products and services or the free gift card at the end of the process.

The domain names used in the URLs embedded in the spam emails were just created in the past month and were all registered using a domain privacy service to keep the domain name owner’s personal information from showing up on global Whois lookups.

We urge our users to always be vigilant and cautious with any unsolicited email and to avoid providing any personal information, particularly if you are not certain of the source.

Dell SonicWALL Gateway Antivirus monitors and provides constant protection against such malicious threats.

Security News

The SonicWall Capture Labs Threat Research Team gathers, analyzes and vets cross-vector threat information from the SonicWall Capture Threat network, consisting of global devices and resources, including more than 1 million security sensors in nearly 200 countries and territories. The research team identifies, analyzes, and mitigates critical vulnerabilities and malware daily through in-depth research, which drives protection for all SonicWall customers. In addition to safeguarding networks globally, the research team supports the larger threat intelligence community by releasing weekly deep technical analyses of the most critical threats to small businesses, providing critical knowledge that defenders need to protect their networks.