The dumbest malware attack I've seen this week

by Graham Cluley on March 19, 2010 | Comments Off

Filed Under: Malware, Spam

When you've been working any length of time in the computer security business, you get pretty used to hearing from folks that the guys who write the viruses must be "evil geniuses".

Well, not all of them are that smart.

Take this attack, for instance, which I just spotted in one of our spam traps. It wins my award for the dumbest malware attack I've seen this week.

Christmas malicious ecard attack, sent in March

A Christmas card? In March? Hmm..

Okay, I'll give the bad guys the benefit of the doubt. They do say Christmas comes earlier every year I suppose, so lets assume the hackers are just "getting in before the rush".

Sophos detects the attached file (Christmas Card.zip) as Troj/CryptBx-ZP

Tags: ,

About the author

Graham Cluley is senior technology consultant at Sophos. The readers of Computer Weekly voted him security blogger of the year in 2009 and 2010, and he pipped Stephen Fry to the title of "Twitter user of the year" too. Which was nice. He was also named "Best Security Blogger" by the readers of SC Magazine in 2011. You can subscribe to Graham's updates on Facebook, follow him on Twitter and circle him on Google Plus for regular updates.