Easter is coming up, and of course that means spammers are taking advantage. They do this with most holidays. And like they do with other holidays, they are using the holiday to disguise malicious emails. Symantec shared some examples with us.
"MessageLabs Intelligence has intercepted Easter ‘e-card’ spam emails offering a ‘2010 Easter 3D e-Card,’" a representative for Symantec tells WebProNews. "Spam authors are attempting to use the recent surge of interest in 3D media to increase the likelihood of people falling for their scam."
"The links that are supposed to allow the recipient to see the fabulous 3D card in reality link to a malicious executable file," she explains. "Anyone who runs it hoping to see their card will be disappointed, as all they will get is an infected computer."
There are other Easter-related spam emails going around that actually lead to legitimate websites, which makes them even harder to detect, but according to Symantec, they contain a large amount of random text and symbols hidden in the HTML source, which is an indication of botnet spam. The firm says there is no reason for anything like this to appear in a legitimate marketing email.
Beware.