Malware has always been pretty nasty, but at least it was polite about it. It would pose as a nice email from an old friend or perhaps a bank statement from your friendly neighborhood credit union. It seems that malware has stopped being Mr. Nice Virus and has taken up the mantle of just being a jerk.
According to naked security, there’s a particularly nasty piece of malware floating around to inboxes around the world with the subject line “You pig!” That’s the first tip that this malware is not here to make friends. It immediately insults you by saying you resemble a farm animal. Unfortunately, it gets worse.
If you open the email to find out why somebody has resorted to petty insults against your good name, you will find the following message, “You should stop ignoring me or i will send this photos to your spouse!!!” Not only does this malware insult you, but it threatens to blackmail you while violating the rules of good grammar. The nerve of some malware, I’m telling you.
The tip off that this is indeed malware and not some long lost scorned lover is that the attached file is a .zip file. Nobody uploads a photo into a .zip file to send over email unless they’re new to this Internet thing or they’re my grandmother. I don’t think my grandmother would have incriminating photos of you, so we’re going to have to go with the new guy on the block scenario.
That theory falls flat on its face as well because the email comes from a multitude of places including LinkedIn, UPS and Hotmail. Look, I don’t care how new you are to the Internet, you don’t have a hotmail and LinkedIn account while working at UPS. These kind of combinations just don’t happen in nature.
So now that we’ve figured out that this particular message is a form of malware – how do you stop it? It turns out that it’s actually two trojans in one. The file inside the .zip folder is a trojan while the actual .zip folder is in itself a trojan as well. Thankfully, both of them can be easily detected with the latest malware updates from your security provider of choice.
Remember, malware is everywhere and it takes on many forms. Be forever vigilant and don’t trust an email just because it says it has scandalous photos. In fact, trust it less if the malware doesn’t at least offer you something good in return for infecting your PC.
