Bogus Google Calendar Meetings Used By Spammers

Nigerian scam spammers are using Google Calendar to find a new gateway into the corporate world.

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(Photo Credit: BitDefender)

According to Web security firm BitDefender the emails are personalized with a different link sent to each recipient, making URL-based filtering much harder.

"This is a new and untried social engineering approach," said BitDefender CTO, Bogdan Dumitru.

"The fact that these things are being spammed in huge numbers is a bit odd — usually there is a testing phase, to evaluate the response rate. Normally, after testing, some techniques are found ineffective and never get used again. This one’s different."

The "Nigerian" scam works by telling the recipient that they have inherited or are due a large amount of money from an unlikely source. The spammer then tells the recipient to provide banking details in order to receive the money.

BitDefender says Google support has been notified to block the accounts used in the scam.